Desert Tales (14 page)

Rika rattled her chains. “
He
didn't attack me though, did he? He didn't chain me up with poison binding my skin.”

“Are you really going to let him get away with this?” Maili came close enough now that Rika could almost reach her. In doing so, Maili had allowed the chains to get slack.

“I don't know. Sionnach is the only faery out here who's made me any offers. No one else has even wanted to talk, but I'd listen if you had a better offer,” Rika said misleadingly as she tried to keep her temper hidden. For a brief moment, she was grateful for the years she'd spent twisting her words and learning to hide her emotions around court fey.

Maili looked at Rika pensively.

“And do I truly need to be shackled to talk?” She shook one arm a bit, causing the chain to shiver. “I'm not opposed to talking, but not like this.”

“You understand, don't you?” Maili's eyes widened in excitement. “He's trying to make us into something we aren't. We make our own way. Humans are fair game. So what if a few of them get broken. . . .”

Rika tilted her head and gave Maili an attentive look. “It has always been that way.”

“Exactly.” Maili let the chains fall looser still. “Keenan's people tell me we can have our freedom still . . . that it won't be any different. . . .”

“So you're going to swear to him?”

“No, I'm not, but if they'll let me break Sionnach and be independent, convincing the others to offer the Summer King a little obedience here and there isn't so bad. I'll become Alpha. Sionnach will either obey or leave. The ones I decide need extra leashing will be forced to swear fealty to the Summer King.”

“He's not trustworthy,” Rika said mildly.

“Exactly. That's why I need you to help me get rid of him.” Maili smiled at Rika like she'd given a particularly insightful answer.

Her chains were finally sagging enough that she could punch Maili—so she did. Then she grabbed her and pulled her close, spinning her so that her back was to Rika's chest. To anyone watching it would look like Rika was embracing her.

“I meant that
Keenan
isn't trustworthy,” Rika corrected.

Maili struggled as Rika choked her with the chains until she was unconscious. Then, holding Maili's limp form in one arm, she used her other hand to go through Maili's pockets until she found the keys. It was not a quick or easy process, but it worked. She retrieved the key and let Maili slump to the ground, alive but not conscious.

“Of course, Shy isn't trustworthy either,” Rika told the unconscious faery. “But he also isn't trying to steal everyone's freedom.”

She unlocked the manacles, put them on Maili, and left her chained up to the fire escape.

Then Rika pocketed the keys and walked away. When she reached the end of the alley and stepped out, Maili's helpers stared at her. None of them moved to attack her now. They weren't malicious. Being a solitary faery meant obeying those stronger; it meant making allegiances that faded when power shifted.

“Don't be stupid,” she cautioned them. “Scratch that. Don't be any stupider than you've already been. Following Maili or believing her theories about trusting the Summer King would be a bad idea.”

One of them started to attempt to explain. “Maili said . . . but we didn't want to hurt you. It's just that Maili said—”

“She's not the strongest faery in the desert,” Rika interjected. “Neither is Shy. I am.”

They didn't reply, but there was nothing truthful they could say. Even those who'd never lived among the court fey knew about the curse. Many of the solitary fey in the desert were those who had fled there to escape the cold that had become so pervasive in much of the world because of the curse. Knowing about the curse also meant that they knew that the former Winter Girls were strong, much stronger than fey who'd hidden in the desert.

“I'm not going to be so forgiving in the future if you keep helping her—or if you injure humans.” Rika looked at them each in turn. “I was human a long time ago. It would be wise to remember that next time you think about harassing mortals.”

Some of them nodded; others looked surly. It didn't matter if they agreed with her rule, though. They would obey her. If not, she'd remind them of how strong she really was. That wasn't the fate she'd sought, but she wasn't going to let anyone push her around again.

 

When Rika returned to her home, she went to the cavern where Jayce and Sionnach were playing a game. They both looked up at her when she entered. She barely nodded at Jayce. She was afraid that if she spoke at all, her anger at Sionnach would boil over. She couldn't remember ever feeling so foolish with anyone but Keenan. The first faery she'd trusted since the Summer King, the first faery in the desert she'd thought of as a friend, and he'd used her.

“You!” She poked Sionnach in the chest. “How dare you manipulate me?”

“So you know,” he said levelly.

“Get out, Sionnach. Now.”

He didn't move. However, Jayce quietly turned away from them, giving her the illusion of privacy. Rika wasn't sure she could stay in the same space with Sionnach. She turned and kept walking, heading back to her bed, not sure of much other than the need to curl into her nest until her temper was cooled.

Sionnach didn't have the sense to let her do that. He followed her, not just into the room but close enough that he now stood directly in front of her. He caught her gaze and simply stared at her for a moment, not speaking or moving. In all the years she'd known him, she'd never been as furious as she was right then, and he just stood there staring at her.

Rika shoved him. “What were you thinking? I trusted you.”

“I made some calculated risks when I knew Maili had gone to
Keenan
.” His voice grew louder as he spoke. “Don't you understand? He's—” Suddenly, Sionnach's words broke off. He walked away, pacing as he did when he was tense or cornered, and when he continued, his voice was level. “I don't want to fight with you. I had a plan, but I needed time before I could explain it all to you.”

“Maili told me. So nice to be a pawn again.” Rika watched him as she told him about being trapped and chained up. She stared at him as she told him everything Maili had said.

Fear was plain on Sionnach's face, but he said nothing.

“You aren't denying any of it,” she said quietly.

“Would you believe me?” he asked just as quietly.

“So Jayce was what? A distraction? A prize?” She felt a familiar tangle of embarrassment and anger. She'd let Sionnach know that she'd cared for Jayce, let him see that she wanted so desperately just to be loved that she'd taken to following a mortal boy around.

Sionnach still said nothing in his defense, nothing to explain away his actions or even ask about Maili's fate or her injuries. He simply stared at her silently.

“How
could
you do this to me?” She repeated the one question that had been playing over and over in her mind since Maili's revelations.

Finally, Sionnach looked as furious as Rika felt, anger replacing the fear in his eyes. “You didn't leave me a lot of options. I've waited for
years
for you to find a reason to come out of your gloom and look at the world. You did
nothing
. You stayed here in the dark and pouted. Caring for someone . . . it makes you see what matters.” His fox tail had flicked madly behind him while he spoke, and then all at once, it stopped. He stilled completely and said only, “I care about you.”

Rika knew that tears were streaking down her cheeks, knew that he saw them and felt guilty for it, but none of that changed anything. He'd manipulated her. She walked up to him, standing closer than she'd ever stood when they'd argued, and folded her arms over her chest. “Not enough to make you honest though.”

Sionnach didn't back down. “Jayce is good for you. Look how happy you've been lately. I just moved a few pieces so you'd have to act on it. Once you were with him, I knew you'd want to make things safer in the desert.”

“You really aren't any different than Keenan, are you?” Tears dripped down her cheeks, falling onto her chest and crossed arms. She didn't wipe away her tears, afraid that if she stopped holding on to herself she'd strike Sionnach.

“You know that's not true, Rika,” he said. “I heard about Keenan being unbound. I tried to make changes so we weren't doing things that would attract his attention too soon, but I wasn't strong enough to handle it alone if he came here . . . and he did. I needed help. You're stronger, and if we work together—if we act like
friends
—we can keep the desert safe.” Sionnach reached out as if to wipe her tears away.

She slapped his hand. “Friends don't manipulate one another.”

“I needed you, and you needed someone who—”

“What about letting
me
decide what I need?”

“You weren't deciding
anything
.” His anger returned, and his tail swished rapidly behind him again.

“So that makes it right to manipulate me?”

“Politics, love, passion—giving Jayce to you solved so many things.” He reached out again, but didn't touch her. “This is best for everyone.”

“So I'm simply to be okay with being manipulated for your
plans
?”

“I care for you enough to want you happy, and I love my freedom enough to want to—”

“To want to use me.” Rika turned and walked into the main room, where Jayce was waiting. He didn't say anything, but he'd obviously heard all of it. After only a moment, he opened his arms, and she went into his embrace.

She buried her face against him and cried.

After her sobs let up, he wiped the tears from her cheeks, but didn't press her to talk. Somewhere inside her home, Sionnach quietly waited, but he didn't seek her out and force her to speak either.

Rika rested her head on Jayce's shoulder, and they sat there silently until evening fell. Jayce didn't chastise her for the mess he'd been drawn into because of her. She waited for him to leave, grateful that he hadn't walked out while she and Sionnach argued.

Finally, Rika went to a trunk and retrieved an oft-folded and refolded letter. She smoothed it out and carried it to Jayce. “Can you dial this number before you go?”

He pulled out his cell phone, put it on speakerphone, and dialed.

Through the phone, a cold voice answered, “Hello.”

“I need to speak to Donia. This is Rika.”

Then Donia's voice came over the line: “Rika? Are you okay?”

“I need your help. Can I see you?”

Donia's laughter was short but genuinely amused. “Not in the desert. You could come to me though.”

“I'm on my way.” Rika waited until Donia disconnected, and then she went to collect her things to travel before Sionnach could notice her departure.

C
HAPTER
16

“Where is that salve?” Jayce asked as she was shoving things into her bag.

Rika said nothing at first. She thought it through one more time. Jayce was at risk with or without the Sight. If he had the ability to see the fey when they were invisible to mortals, he was in danger of having his eyes gouged out. If he didn't have the ability to see them, he was unable to see those that could hurt him.

“Rika?”

“You can't let the court fey know that you can see them without their consent.” She stopped packing and stared at him. “Can you be
sure
you can do that for the rest of your life?”

Jayce paused, his expression flickering between thoughtful and determined. After a few moments, he said, “There are creatures all around me that I can only see when they allow it. I want to see the whole world because . . . it seems wrong
not
to see, and I don't want to be blind to threats.”

Silently, Rika retrieved the tiny pot of salve from her bag. She'd stuffed it in there before anything else, figuring it was best to carry it with them just in case they needed it. Jayce watched her with a solemn gaze that altered only briefly when he saw where the salve had been.

Carefully, she dabbed the salve onto her fingertip and then applied it to his eyes. She hoped that Sionnach had made it correctly, had found the right recipe, had thought this through. Even now, when she was furious with him, she trusted him enough to use the ointment he'd given them.

Jayce blinked a little, stared at her, and then murmured, “You look the same.”

“I used to be human,” she reminded him.

He nodded, and they finished gathering their things to travel.

Once they were in the desert, she was relieved that he could contain his reaction to the faeries that were now visible to him. He muttered “Wow,” but he didn't stare at them and his soft exclamation could've been in reference to anything. He squeezed her hand a couple of times, either in excitement or nervousness, but in all, he hid his reaction to seeing the world revealed in a new light. She hadn't been anywhere near that subtle in her responses when she'd first seen the creatures that lived hidden all around mortals. Then again, she'd also just
become
such a creature, so her own responses were heightened by emotions he didn't have to experience.

“It's amazing,” he said, almost reverently. His gaze drifted across the desert, and anyone watching could easily think he was referring to the cacti and cliffs.

“Deadly too,” she reminded him.

“My girlfriend is ruling the desert, right?”

“More or less.”

“Then I feel pretty safe,” he told her. “You can keep me safe.”

Admittedly, he had a point. Whether she took Alpha from Sionnach—which she certainly could if she wanted to—or accepted his repeated offered to share it with him, she would be able to keep Jayce safe from the fey here. She could order them not to reveal his Sight. Realizing that went far to easing her worries.

“Only here though,” she cautioned. “Outside the desert, I have no power.”

He nodded.

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.

In a surge of movement surprisingly quick in the midday heat, the faeries skittered away from Rika and Jayce. Their expressions were clouded with mistrust and doubt as they stared at the mortal boy beside her. Rika couldn't truly blame them; it
was
unusual to be seen by mortals. There were those rare few born with faery Sight, but she couldn't recall the last time she'd seen such a mortal.

“He
sees
us,” one faery accused.

With more patience that she wanted to have, Rika put her hands on her hips. “I gave him faery Sight. It seemed only fair.”

The faeries scurried away muttering about her disregard for the rules, and Rika was momentarily glad that the faery regent she was going to see that day had reputedly broken that very same rule recently—and had done so for the new Summer Queen's beloved. If the regents were allowing mortals to have the Sight, it was harder to argue that she shouldn't have done so.

Jayce draped his arm over her shoulders. “I'm not your pet, but I am yours. I know you're upset over what Sionnach did, but falling on you was the best thing that I ever did.”

“You didn't fall. They
pushed
you,” she corrected him. “Sionnach probably told them to do it. Solitaries are not civilized. They're manipulative.”

“I know.”

“And the same faery who helped Shy stabbed him.”

“I know,” he repeated.

“Maili tried to injure me earlier. She said all she wanted to do was talk, but she hurt me to do it.” Rika moved away from him, hoping that distance from his touch would strengthen her resolve to leave him in the desert. She held up her bruised and burned wrists. “She did this.”

“I
know
.” Jayce followed her. “I listened when you explained it—and when you yelled at Shy. I heard it all, but I'm not giving up on you just because we were manipulated or because you're a faery.”

“You should. You know that, don't you?”

“Don't let Shy or Keenan or any of them”—Jayce gestured into the direction the faeries went—“make you give up on us.”

“Faeries can't keep mortals,” Rika said sorrowfully. “And now that Shy . . . and Maili . . . and Keenan have put me in this position. . . .” She looked away, unable to bear the tangled frustration and determination in his expression.

“So tell me you'd be happier without me. Tell me you haven't had more fun these past few weeks than you have had in a very long time.”

She looked back at him and admitted, “I can't, but I'll have responsibilities now. If I'm going to be Alpha or even co-Alpha, things will change. Maili won't be the only faery to challenge me. There will be fights, and I have to figure out what to do about Sionnach, and if Donia won't help, I need to deal with Keenan, and—”

“You'll be busier,” he interrupted. “That's fine. You do your Alpha thing, and we'll date around your schedule of fighting rowdy faeries. It's not like I can't find things to do when you're busy: classes, skating, art, climbing. . . .” He caught her hands and pulled her closer. “I have a
life
of my own, you know? I just want to be a part of yours, too.”

Rika shook her head. It sounded too easy, and she'd never exactly known a relationship to be easy. Maybe he was right though. With more hope than she'd felt since before Sionnach was stabbed and she was captured, she asked, “You're sure?”

“I've never been
more
sure.” Jayce kissed her, giving her the reassurance that she needed.

When she pulled away, she kept hold of one of his hands. “Fine. Let's go see the Winter Queen then. With her help, I won't have to fight as often.”

With his hand in hers, she began to run across the desert. The speed at which she could move was something that she'd cherished about being fey from the very beginning. At first, she'd needed that speed to better serve the last Winter Queen. She'd helped to freeze the earth, a painful process that hadn't ever gotten easier with time. Carrying some of the weight of winter inside a body was painful for anyone other than the Winter Queen. She'd done it as her punishment for trusting Keenan, the cost of being willing to cross the then Winter Queen, who had wanted no one to take the test. The only benefits of the curse were that she had been made fey—given speed and near-immortality—and those advantages were only conferred on the Winter Girls because without them, the girls would die when they took the test. Now, that same faery speed was simply a benefit that she could utilize for her own purposes. As they ran, the scenery blurred as they raced by cities, fields, and mountains, until they stopped in a busy street in front of a house that had featured in far too many of her nightmares.

The massive gray house before them had turrets and oddly shaped windows that were filled by faces of creatures that had once seemed stranger than she could've created in her darkest hours. Those same faeries were no longer a threat to her, but back then she'd been the Winter Girl cursed by the old Winter Queen, who had seemed to live to terrorize everyone.

The house seemed less ominous now even though faces still peered from the windows, and the yard was snow-draped despite it being spring. Rika's grasp on Jayce's hand tightened as they approached the iron fence that still wrapped around the property. She was briefly surprised that Donia hadn't had the poisonous metal removed, but with the upheaval between the courts, maybe that touch of menace was wise. Winter was still the strongest of the courts, even though Summer was recently unbound. A reminder that Donia could be a force to fear was a good move politically.

“Everything should be fine,” Rika whispered, but she still shivered as she stepped through the gate and onto the elegantly curved sidewalk that wound between trees that were bowing under the weight of snow and ice. She wasn't sure that everything
would
be fine. An awful lot of things were very
not
fine in her life, but she'd known Donia since the girl was a mortal. Like Rika, Donia had been one of the unlucky girls who had caught the then–bound Summer King's attention. Rika had done all she could to convince her not to take the test. Afterward, she'd worked hard to hide her own bitterness from Donia, hoping that she could ease the newly fey girl's pain by creating the illusion that one day forgiveness and freedom would come. Donia had been the last Winter Girl, though. Recently, she had been freed from the curse and replaced Beira, the Winter Queen who had made them all suffer for so long. Of all the faeries Rika had met, none were so easily trusted as the former Winter Girls. None of them spent much time together, choosing instead to forge new lives, but they all helped when one of their sisters needed them. Rika would be surprised if Donia refused her offer—especially when what she'd come to propose would also be an asset to the new queen.