Melissa Marr: Desert Tales: A Wicked Lovely Companion Novel

When he withdrew his hand, she was trembling as if she were the human girl she appeared to be. Her voice came out very softly and tentatively when she said, “I . . . I wasn’t in danger. It was just a few rocks.”

He paused, almost imperceptibly, but she’d studied him often enough that she noticed. After a breath, he said, “Feeling invincible? A good scare will do that, won’t it?”

Rika made an agreeing noise.

Jayce pulled a wipe out of the rucksack and wiped the blood and sand from his arm. “But rocks falling like that can mean a bigger one is coming down too.”

She ignored the topic at hand. She wanted to talk to him, but the faery inability to lie was making her feel tongue-tied. The age-old tradition among faeries was to use omission and misdirection when avoiding truths, as Keenan had done, but she’d spoken so often to Jayce when he was unaware of her presence that she’d rather skip any topic altogether than misdirect.

“Do you need help?” she blurted.

“I’m good.” He bound his arm, wrapping the bandage around it tightly. “I was up there for a while. You’d think I’d have seen you down here, but it was like you just appeared out of empty air. . . .” His words trailed off as he stared at her as if he was looking at her as her , not a girl he fell on. He smiled at her again like she’d dreamed he one day would.

The temptation was too much: she gave in and touched his arm, not a caress, but contact. “Don’t stand so close to the edge next time, okay? Please.”

He said nothing. Her hand was on his skin, and they were both motionless, staring at each other.

“But I wasn’t too close—” He glanced at her hand, and then back at her. “I know this might sound crazy after I fell and just about crushed you, but do you want to do something later?”

She opened her mouth, but no words came out. The last time anyone had shown romantic interest in her was well over a century ago, when she was mortal, when she had no idea that faeries were real. She couldn’t remember how to do this, how to be a girl next to a boy.

No good comes of faeries pursuing mortals , she reminded herself . I can’t do this.

Panicked, she looked at the cliff. The faeries were gone.

“I need to go,” Rika announced, and then she turned and ran, not as fast as she could, because that would be the sort of thing any mortal would notice as Other , but fast enough that there was no way Jayce could catch up to her.

Hours passed as Rika sat inside the cave she’d called home for years. Only one lamp cast light in the shadows, and the fire pit remained cold. The desert heat was enough that she wasn’t uncomfortable, but the chill had begun to creep into her home. Rather than do anything about it, Rika curled on her pallet in the shadows, hiding like an injured animal. Water ran through the side of the cavern in a little fissure, and the sound of it calmed her a bit.

“I can’t risk it. Not again.” She spoke the words to no one in particular. Like most of her conversations, there was no one to reply to her complaints. She’d chosen this life, the solitude she’d found here in the cave in the desert, far from the faery courts, separate even from the desert fey.

She’d tried. Before. Before the winter, before I lost everything. . . . That had been a mistake. Love is a mistake.

She forced herself to remember, to dredge up the thoughts that would help her stick to her resolve. She remembered sitting at a table with Keenan. He had looked human, too. She didn’t know it then, but now she knew that he was hiding his true self under a glamour, an illusion faeries create to mislead mortals.

He holds her hand in his, staring at her intently. She blushes. He’s wearing fine clothes, fashioned from cloth nicer than her best dresses. Even his most modest attire speaks of wealth greater than anyone she’s met. Despite that, he doesn’t look askance at her faded dress—or her plain home. She’s never seen his home, but she’s imagined how different it must be. Her home is filled with simple handcrafted wooden furniture, and not much of it, but it is clean and orderly. She’s softened the sparseness with the bouquets of flowers he’s brought.

“Come with me? Please?” he pleads, and she can’t think of how she could deny him anything. Keenan’s very presence brightens everything, and he wants her to be his, to love him and stand by his side.

Rika answers the only way she can, “Yes.”

He pulls her to her feet and embraces her, as he whispers, “You are the one I’ve been waiting for. You have to be her. . . .”

In her cave, Rika wiped away tears as she remembered the hope she felt that day, the warmth that permeated her entire being. She’d believed that he loved her as she had loved him, that she had found a man who would cherish and protect her.

She had been so very wrong.

The ground is covered with snow, but as Keenan walks toward her his skin glows as if flames flicker just under the surface, the ground at his feet roils as it melts and churns. She knows now that he is not human, that he is something exceptional , a king. She feels like she’s in the middle of a fairy tale, on the verge of her very own happily ever after.

He is barefoot, a golden effigy too beautiful to look at or to look away from. “You understand that if you are not the one, you’ll carry the Winter Queen’s chill until the next mortal risks this?”

She nods. This isn’t the wedding ceremony she’d expected. It’s better though. The boy she’s fallen in love with is a faery, a magical being who has chosen her to love. She’s about to become fey too, because he picked her to be his queen. There’s a risk; she knows that, but they are in love, and love will break the magic spell binding him.

“If she refuses me, you will tell the next girl and the next”—he moves closer—“and not until one accepts, will you be free of the cold.”

“I do understand.” She walks over to the hawthorn bush. The leaves brush against her arms as she bends down and reaches under it.

She sees the Winter Queen’s staff. It is a plain thing, worn as if countless hands have clenched the wood, and she almost hesitates.

Then, behind her, he moves closer. The rustling of trees grows loud, and the brightness from his skin intensifies. He needs her to do this.

Her fingers wrap around the Winter Queen’s staff.

His sunlight warms her, and his radiance makes her shadow fall on the ground in front of her. The heat grows as he whispers, “Please. Let her be the one. . . . Please. This time . . .”

She holds on to the wooden staff as she straightens. She turns to face him, blinking against the brightness that fills him. Until this moment, she has believed, but as she holds it, his light fades away and an impossible chill consumes her body.

Her skin covers with frost, and she collapses. Ice spreads out from under her now prone body, freezing the ground that had only moments before been boiling mud. She can barely move from the pain, and her teeth chatter as she tries to speak.

A very large white wolf approaches her, and she knows that the wolf is as magical as the boy she’s fallen in love with. She rests her face in the wolf’s warm fur, and then she turns her head to Keenan and says, “I’m sorry I’m not . . . her.”

But he is walking away, no longer glowing, no longer even looking at her.

As she let the memories wash over her, Rika felt the tears that were slipping down her cheeks, and she wished that she had lit the fire before allowing herself to dwell on the folly of love. More years than she ever expected to live had passed since those days, but the chill was hard to forget, even here.