A dazzling grin lit up his face. “Yeah, they do, don’t they? Talk about perplexing the fuck out of Ryodan,” he said, and laughed. “Should have seen his face the day I was with him, Barrons, and Mac, and the ZEWs gave me the same wide berth they gave him and Barrons. It was priceless. I’ve got the Rhino-boys’ number, and a few other lower castes, too, but I haven’t made progress with the higher castes yet. Got diverted, working on the song.” He reached down and pushed up the cuff of his jeans, revealing a sort of watch strapped around his ankle with a small black cube attached to it, covered with blinking lights. “I got started thinking one night about how the Fae are made of energy and how dogs and invisible fences and silent whistles and things like that work, so I began experimenting with a transmitter, modulating and testing frequencies on the Fae, goal being to repel, not kill. Sometimes we set our sights too high when a lesser goal would be both quicker to attain and virtually as effective. I figured if I could invent something that kept all the Fae away from you, well, I’d be the Shit.”

“You’re already the Shit, Dancer,” I told him.

“Yeah but I want to be even shittier shit,” he said, and waggled his brows at me.

I smiled, forcing myself not to let the sadness I felt show. I couldn’t do that to him. It wouldn’t be fair. “You’re the shittiest shit I know and probably ever will.”

He sobered quickly, looking into my eyes, studying me with unnerving intensity. “Shittier than Ryodan?”

I was instantly wary, defensive. “What do you mean? What does Ryodan have to do with any of what we’re talking about?”

“Don’t be a porcupine, Mega. Not prying or judging. It’s just that sometimes I think he…well, maybe you…the two of you, er—” He broke off, sighed, and shoved a hand into his thick hair, ruffling it. “I’ll never be like him. I’m not wired that way. I’m a brainy, geeky seventeen-year-old with a bad heart. Not much makes me feel insecure but that dude does. He’s everything you are and I’m not.”

I bristled. “Don’t you ever tell me you have a bad heart! Never say those words again. You’ve got the biggest heart in the world. You bring out the best in everyone around you and people love you. But you’re right. You’re not like him and never will be.”

He shifted uncomfortably and went crazy on his hair again, running both hands through it. I let him stew for a moment, trying to absorb this bizarre moment, that he cared about me enough that it made him—the man not even Death rattled—feel insecure. Then I got distracted watching his arms. Now that I knew how perilous working out was for him, I admired even more deeply the patient will that had found a way to work within limits that would have made a lot of other people give up. I’d learned at a young age that every day mattered, that killing time was the worst thing you could do to it. Dancer had learned it, too.

“Wow. Not helping much here,” he muttered.

I caught one of his hands in mine and slowly laced our fingers together. I’d never taken a man’s hand of my own desire before, open to the moment and what that moment might bring. I was in such uncharted territory and this was so not the way I’d always imagined it going down. Not that anything was going down. That would be like willingly ascending the mountain of stupidity to perch on the apex right before the inevitable avalanche came along and wiped you out, and that was never going to happen. But I wasn’t averse to admiring the mountain from the foothills. “Ryodan’s strength comes from knowing he’s strong,” I told him. “Your strength comes from knowing you’re not. You’re the one with the superpower in my book. And it’s only one of the many you have.”

His smile was blinding. “Mega, I’m going to kiss you now.”

I inhaled deep, exhaled slow. We’d never gone here, and once we did, there would be no turning back. Our friendship would be forever changed. You can’t unkiss a man you’ve kissed.

I let him.

ZARA

She stood motionless, staring around in disbelief.

Was this a joke?

Zara glanced up at the lighted sign that swayed on a striped pole above her head proclaiming THE STAG’S HEAD, then back at the door behind her through which she’d just exited.

It wasn’t the door she’d stepped into.

Not even close. She’d been entering a doorway in the sunny yellow part of the White Mansion and the moment she passed beneath the transom felt resistance and something diverting her sideways, casting her down a different path.

Out through a completely different door.

Into night in Dublin.

She narrowed her eyes, scowling.

Earth was the last place she wanted to be.

She wasn’t dying on this world. She was done with this planet and every other that had ever hosted the Fae race.

Nor was she staying in the White Mansion and living her final days in the cage the king had designed for her. Upon leaving the boudoir, she’d been making her way to the Passion Muse’s Garden, the one with the silvery fountain and the fabulous sunroom, the one that took her, if she passed far beyond it and went through many portals, back out into the flow of time, on another world, far, far from there. She’d found it eons ago. Had on her saddest days gone walking and walking, uncaring, taking paths and finally portals at random.

The small planet reminded her of her home, and she’d wondered if the king put it there deliberately, knowing she’d find it, giving her an escape route, because each year, century, millennium she didn’t use it, he’d continue to know she’d truly chosen him over all else.