Melissa Marr: Desert Tales: A Wicked Lovely Companion Novel

“Always a princess, never a queen.”

She looked up at the words, even though she knew who had spoken. No one else had the audacity to enter her home without her consent.

“Sionnach,” she greeted him quietly.

The fox faery leaned against the wall at the mouth of the cave. He smiled at her, flashing her the sly smile that he wore more often than he wore a shirt. Even though he had the only true authority in this desert, he was poised on her threshold like he hadn’t a care in the world. Unlike some of the other desert fey, Sionnach looked more human than Other, but he still had telltale foxlike features. His short auburn hair wasn’t remarkable, but his eyes were—angular and large, those eyes could drown a person. His cheeks were edged too sharply, and his movements were quick and agile, emphasizing the fact that even with his almost-human appearance his actions often seemed alien. The way he stood hid his fox tail from her view, and in the shadows, his pointed ears were barely noticeable. In all, though, most of his features were just enough out of normal mortal proportions that a person wanted to look longer, but not so Other that they were unsettling. The glamour he donned around humans was primarily to hide his tail and ears.

“I hear that pretty boy visited you, and that you were playing with the mortals. . . .” He came closer as he spoke, but he didn’t walk directly toward her. He slid farther into the cavern. Years ago, his peculiar way of moving when he was inside struck her as unsettling, but now she knew that it was simply how Sionnach was: he walked almost sideways into the cave in a skittish way that revealed that he was not comfortable inside, even if that inside was only a cave. He was shy, long ago earning himself the nickname of “Shy” as a result.

“I loathe this den of yours,” he complained as he leaned on a thick stalagmite almost beside her, one foot crossed over the ankle in a pretense of ease. This, too, was his way, posturing as if he were among the court fey. If Rika had not lived among the courts, Sionnach’s carefully casual mien might intimidate her as it did the others in the desert.

“If you hate it, don’t visit.” Rika glared at him, embarrassed that he’d seen her tears even though he didn’t remark on her wet cheeks.

A coy smile came over him. “No chance of that. You’d be even more miserable without me.”

When she didn’t answer, he dropped down beside her, cross-legged, and rested his elbows on his knees. He folded his hands under his chin and stared at her. “What with all of these new habits, are you going to go out roaming with me next? Venture out visibly? . . . Or are you going back with the pretty boy now that he’s not so impotent?”

“No. No. And NO.” She sighed and looked away. Tears blurred her vision again, and she wished that she could pretend to be unmoved by Keenan’s visit and her subsequent encounter with Jayce. She’d spoken to Keenan often enough over the years to be beyond her emotions, but knowing that he’d finally found his missing queen had stirred up old hurt. There truly had been a mortal who wouldn’t suffer for having been chosen by him. Rika simply hadn’t been her.

Without knowing the specifics of what she’d been worrying over, Sionnach knew Rika well enough that he caught her face in his hands and made her look at him. “Temper suits you better than self-defeat, princess.”

She couldn’t speak. It wasn’t often that Sionnach was serious. Often, he’d cajole or tease when she was sad, but rarely did the fox resort to seriousness. She’d heard the shift in his tone just now. He continued, “The Summer King doesn’t deserve your tears. He never did.”

“I know,” she said, but she was still crying.

One hand cupped her face. With the other, Sionnach caught a tear on his fingertip as it slid down her cheek and then licked it from his finger. “Not ice. Not now. Not ever again.”

But I’m still cold , she thought.

She couldn’t say those words, couldn’t admit that she could feel the chill too strongly when her memories washed over her, so she said, “I hate it when he comes here.”

“Me too.” Sionnach lowered his hand from her face and scooted back just a little. He teased, but she’d never taken his teasing or his assurances as something more. Tonight was no different. The fox’s seriousness faded, and his smile grew dangerous. “But, it’d be silly of you to be here pouting while irritable faeries break that mortal you keep watching. . . .”

“What?” she gasped.

Sionnach shrugged, but his eyes twinkled with trouble. “They’re mad at pretty boy, mad at you, so they’re in a mood. You know how they get.”

“But—”

“You saved the mortal,” Sionnach reminded her. “You can’t be surprised that they felt petulant about it.”

“Why didn’t you stop—”

“Your mortal shouldn’t be my concern.” He widened his already enormous eyes in a beguiling look. “You should have enough time . . . if you go now. He’s at the railroad tracks.”

“You’re such a pain.” She shoved him backward, any flash of tenderness she felt for him thoroughly quashed.

In that faery-quick way, Sionnach rushed to the mouth of her cave alongside her. Then he stopped, going no farther, but as she raced past him, he murmured, “You needed a distraction, princess.”

Inside the town of Silver Ridge, everything was faded. In the desert around the town, the colors were the beautiful hues of cactus and desert wildflowers, vibrant skies and impossibly rendered clouds, shimmers of serpents and flutters of birds. Silver Ridge, however, had a weathered tone. Sand and heat consumed everything here, but even so, the town had a beauty all its own. The buildings were a strange mix, as if architecture from various times and places had been thrown together in a weird hodgepodge.

Rika remembered when Silver Ridge was only a speck of a possibility, when adventurous miners came here in search of fortunes, when their families put down roots, and when the mishmash of people became a town. The peculiarity of knowing the town’s history so well comforted her as she walked. She’d watched this small outpost of humanity grow in the great expanse of nature; she’d walked among them and drawn portraits of their faces as they came, aged, and died. She felt protective of the mortals who lived there now, but several in particular evoked a fiercer sense of concern.

She stopped midway into town, not wanting to get too close to the railroad tracks that stretched like a line of beautiful poison on the earth. Steel, because it was created from iron, was poisonous to faery. Humans—without knowing why they gravitated toward the steel—often lingered here at the edge of the tracks. A few decades ago, they’d created a park of sorts, filled with metal sculptures and benches, but even before that, mortals had clustered here since the tracks had been installed.

On the edge of the rail yard were faeries who had been stopped by the metal as if it were a wall they could not climb. They watched the mortals: Jayce, Del, and Kayley. Del no longer wore his bandana, and Rika noticed that his blue mohawk now had white tips. It suited him, his vibrant hair against his suntanned skin, but it struck her as being so different from Jayce. Del’s mohawk with its ever-changing color was much like his carefully chosen clothes: proof that he put time into looking like he didn’t worry over his appearance. By contrast, Jayce truly didn’t pay much attention to the way he looked. He had a splash of color in his dark dreads, but that had been a whim. Rika knew; she’d watched. Everything about Jayce was as real with or without an audience; she admired that about him.