She followed his gaze to where a desert tortoise plodded across the ground. When Jayce saw it at the edge of the road, he dropped his sketch pad on top of his satchel and picked up the tortoise.
He carefully lowered the tortoise onto the sand on the other side of the road. “Too many dangers for you out here.” Jayce watched the tortoise continue its journey into the desert. Then he glanced at the darkening sky. “Looks like it’s time for me to go too.”
As he packed up his art supplies, Rika packed hers as well, but when she looked in the same direction Jayce had, her happiness fled. What appeared to be an ordinary storm to Jayce was something Rika saw as far worse: a faery raced toward her in the heart of a swirling dust devil. Surrounded by twisting sand was the source of all of her greatest sorrows, Keenan, the Summer King himself.
Embarrassingly, even in the midst of the waves of ugly emotion his presence elicited, Rika couldn’t stop the sigh that escaped her at the sight of Keenan. When she’d fallen for him, Keenan had still been a bound king, the strength of summer hidden from him inside a mortal girl. Even then, he was captivating. Now that his curse was broken, he was devastating to see.
He’d spent nine centuries seeking his Summer Queen, romancing innocent after innocent. At one point, he’d convinced Rika that she was the one he needed. Worse still, he’d convinced Rika that she loved him enough to risk finding out if she was the one he needed. She hadn’t been the missing queen, and as a result of the curse, she’d been transformed into a faery, filled with ice and cold as punishment for failing the test. Such was the horrible cost of trying to break the curse that bound summer.
Many years and many foolish girls later, the Summer King had found his mortal—a girl named Aislinn—and taken her humanity as he had all of the others. This time, the newly fey girl was filled with sunlight, and Keenan was finally radiant with the summer strength he’d been seeking for so long. To herself, Rika could admit that she was happy that the curse was un-made. A world slowly freezing would have eventually killed every living creature except for those faeries who were a part of the Winter Court. It had been a horrible curse, a horrible fate for the world.
But I still can’t forgive him. Not for the loss of my mortality. Not for the trickery. Not for the years of carrying ice in my skin.
Spirals of wind and sand whipped out around Keenan as he stopped in front of her.
“Why?” Rika asked.
“Why what?” Keenan had stilled, but the air around him hadn’t. The sand was uplifted, held aloft by his magic.
It wasn’t really a question she could explain—or one he could ever answer to her satisfaction. Rika’s words were careful, whether out of sorrow or anger she couldn’t say. “Why do you still bother me?”
He paused, and in a moment, Keenan had willed the sand into two chairs. Rika wouldn’t admit it aloud, but the chairs were beautifuclass="underline" they appeared as solid as sandstone cliffs, like rocks with striations. The sand-formed chairs were positioned at slight angles to each other, as if they were at a small two-person table in a bistro, not in the vast expanse of desert. The Summer King wasn’t quite posturing, but like every court faery he was clearly aware of his appearance. He always had been, even when half of his power was hidden away from him. Now that he was freed, he was positively preening. He sat upon a chair that hadn’t existed until he willed it and waited, looking like the king he was, expecting her to be flattered by his attention and awed by his skills.
She wasn’t flattered. His attention never boded well. So Rika didn’t sit. Instead, she folded her arms over her chest and glared at him.
He frowned. “Is it truly such a chore to talk to me?”
“I think it is,” she said. Fairies couldn’t lie—that rule was as old as the cliffs that stretched out in the distance of the desert—but they could prevaricate or temper their words. Rika stepped farther away from him.
“Even now?” Keenan asked. Heat radiated from him, to him, as if his skin was breathing the extreme temperature in and out. He was the Summer King as he had only ever been in the moments when mortal girl after mortal girl risked everything for him. Now that he was unbound, he would be fully himself all the time, but the memories of seeing him like this pushed against her as fiercely as the heat.
When Rika didn’t answer, he added, “You’re free of the ice.”
“I still dream of it.” Rika turned to face him even though she knew she still looked vulnerable. “I wake up convinced that winter is still inside my veins. What you did—”
“I didn’t do that to you.” Keenan’s voice filled with frustration and the heat around them flared momentarily stronger. “I didn’t want you to suffer. I never wanted any of you to suffer.”
“Did you choose me?” Rika asked softly, tilting her head so that her short hair, cut in a modern way she knew he hated, brushed her shoulder. She moved so he could see the silver jewelry piercing her ear. She was not going to live in the past, not going to look like the girl who was foolish enough to trust him. When he didn’t reply, she added, “Did you convince me that you loved me?”
“I did, but—”
“Did I carry ice in my body for years because of that mistake?” She stepped closer. “Because I believed you loved me?”
“Yes, but—”
“So why wouldn’t it bother me to see you?” She moved so close that she was in his space. He could crush her without any effort, incinerate her with the sunlight he carried inside of him, but she didn’t care. She’d decided many years ago that she would never bow before him. All she had left was her pride. He’d taken everything else, and when she hadn’t been the girl with sunlight inside of her, he’d rejected her.
Keenan ran his hand through his hair in a familiar gesture of frustration. The strands shimmered like glistening copper, like solidified sunlight, captivating even now. He couldn’t argue without lying, but he wanted her to bend.
Rika couldn’t. In the desert, the passive were less free. Maybe it had been the same in the faery courts and in the human world. Back then, however, she didn’t know how important it was to speak for what she believed. She’d learned though. “Look at where we are. Cities are poisonous to me, Keenan. Iron, steel, they leave me sick now. . . .”
Despite her still-raw anger, the Summer King didn’t flinch. “That’s part of being faery. Almost all faeries have that limitation. It’s not—”
“—fair, Keenan,” she finished. “It’s not fair.”
She turned her back to him and sat in one of the sand chairs.
“It’s not unusual,” he corrected. “I was going to say it’s not unusual. Faeries are weakened by steel and iron. It’s just the way we always have been.”
“But I wasn’t always like this. I was human before you.”
“A long time ago.” He reached out as if he’d touch her. He didn’t, but a sand-filled breeze that looked ever-so-slightly like fingertips brushed her cheek. “I can’t take it back, but I’m sorry you’re sad. I did love you.”
“That was a long time ago too. And look where it left me. . . .”
Keenan’s eyes flashed in anger. He waved his hand, and myriad paths—like unpaved roads—formed like patterns stretching across the desert. “So go. You’re far stronger than you admit. You might not be able to live in a city, but you can leave here.”