“Tadaima.”

I turned around and kissed him, which was difficult, because I was holding a sauté pan and a wooden spoon, and he had me tight around the waist. He stepped back, and I set the cooking things down and twisted so we could kiss properly. I gestured, rolling my shoulders in a shrug at the pan of mushrooms and snap peas and tofu and red Thai chilies, and he nodded approvingly. We had both gone out today, him to his tengu and me to my cait sith, and I’d wanted to surprise him like he had me last night. I wanted to make up for what I’d done last night too, or, if not make up for it, create a situation that would be comfortable and simple and undemanding. I was ridiculously glad it still seemed easy between us, with him walking through the door and eager to find me.

“What does that mean?”

He stepped back and let me stir the food in the pan. He slumped against the counter to watch me finish cooking. One hand stayed on my waist. “‘I’m back.’” He paused, and I glanced over my shoulder at him. “Or, ‘I’m home.’” His skin darkened, going dusky with a blush. I watched it spread, his scales going almost black. “I suspect that’s what your sister wanted it to mean, the other day.”

I set the spoon down. “When she said that word?”

He nodded. “Okaeri. ‘Welcome home.’ It’s traditional Japanese.” He ducked his head.

I took a deep breath. “You don’t need to say it because she thinks you should.” I wanted him to mean it. I wanted to say, Welcome home, and have him feel like that was where he was. Like he belonged next to me, or I belonged with him.

He shook his head. “I couldn’t say it then. Not yet. Not the way she wanted it. It scared me.”

I nodded. He smiled.

“I want to say it now. My choice.”

I had to turn away. I didn’t want him to know how important this was to me. But I know he saw me smile. Knew he felt me lean into his hand.

“Where on earth did she learn that?” Saben surprised me all the time these days. She’d always known a lot about other fey—it was her duty to know. That didn’t mean she needed to learn Japanese, though.

Kin shrugged. “Who knows?” He grinned at me. “Kids these days.”

“Do you want me to say it? That other word?” He’d said it fast, and it had flowed out of his mouth, so that I hadn’t been able to catch all the sounds in it. I didn’t want to say it yet, sure I would embarrass myself with the pronunciation.

But Kin shook his head. “I’m only a Japanese descendant. I was born here. ‘Welcome home’ works just fine for me.”

It worked for me too—well enough that it made a little shiver run up my spine when Kin said it. But I was still curious about where Saben had learned it.

When I saw her the next afternoon, I asked her about it. “Where did you learn Japanese?”

Saben frowned at me. “I don’t know Japanese.”

I shook my finger at her, taunting. “Oh, but Kin tells me you do.”

“Oh. That.” She set down a plate in front of me. A salad of mangos and onions and crumbled, salty cheese, which seemed like it shouldn’t have worked, but did. She shrugged as she sat down across the table from me. “I read manga.”

“You . . . what?”

“Manga. It’s a Japanese graphic novel—”

I waved my fork at her. “I know what manga is. I just didn’t expect that you’d be interested in anything like that.”

She took a bite of her salad and swallowed. “I wasn’t. But it’s important that I know who I’m dealing with when new fey come into our territory. While I was researching the yokai and whatnot, I found manga.”

“Oh.” I scooped up a bit of everything on my fork and popped it in my mouth. It was good. It was beyond good. It tasted salty sweet and free of magic, distinctly human, organic—not necessarily in how it was grown, but in how it was made. It had none of the cloying sugariness or false richness that magic and glamour created in food. It felt warm, although the fruit was cold against my tongue. “And why did you feel the need to bully Kin into saying something like that?”

She glanced up. “It wasn’t bullying. It was nudging.”

“Either way.” I rolled my eyes at her.

Her fork clinked against the plate. The dishes were thin, fine china, painted with blue flowers. They were too delicate for the apartment, like she’d brought them from some period ballroom where women would eat from them wearing enormous, tight dresses and men would smoke pipes and laugh softly together while they used their forks to push peas around the patterns on the plates. The truth probably wasn’t so far off. They’d come from the fey. They could have come from anywhere, before that.

“Why are we talking about this?”

Because I was annoyed and confused and my heart hurt a little. It stung when I thought of her trying to get Kin to say that, both because I was angry, and because I thought it meant she cared, in her own strange way, and I didn’t understand.

“Why am I sitting in your kitchen, eating a salad that I’m pretty sure you made with just a regular knife and cutting board?”

“And a peeler,” she added. “I peeled the mango.”

“Saben.” I set my fork down. I leaned forward so I could look at her. “You’ve got to tell me what’s going on. This isn’t about me, not all of it. I know it. What are you doing?”

“It was a ceramic knife,” she said. She wasn’t looking at me.

“Don’t brush me off.”

She pushed her plate away and leaned back in her chair, away from me. “How long were you gone?”

I took a deep breath. “Six years. Just about.” She knew that, though.

“Why were you gone so long? What were you searching for while you were gone?” She tilted her head, studying me. “It can’t have just been a cure. A place to belong? A place where you could disappear?”

Yes and yes. I had wanted to leave them behind. My mother’s death and the house she’d left me that I couldn’t deal with, my father with his regality, my sister who was all fey where I was only half, the fey and the humans who flowed around me but never fully accepted me. I had wanted to leave myself behind, leave my memories and the knowledge of what I was. I had wanted to be someone different.

It was impossible, though. No matter where I went, I was still me. I still wore the same clothes, because they were comfortable. I ate new foods and liked them, but never forgot the old, familiar flavors I relished. And the fey side of me was always there. It was there when I slipped into a shadow to avoid a pickpocket. It was there in the way my joints hurt if it was a damp morning. It was the color of my hair. And my mother and the human side were the color of my skin, my height. Her eyes in my face, the way I struck up conversations easily, so I could get to know a place.

Saben was watching me. Watching me remember being free, but not really free. That trip had changed a lot of things for me. But it had also made it clear what things would never change. I looked up at Saben and said nothing.

“I don’t want it. The fey. The life they live. I don’t want it,” she said, the words tumbling out of her mouth in an ungainly rush. “I have this long life before me. It’s so long. Why should I trap myself in one place forever? Why should I always belong to them? Why can’t I try something new? Live how I want? I have so much time.” She bit her lip. “Or what if my life is short,” she continued, slow now, her words measured. “What if something happens, and I die, and I haven’t lived the way I wanted, tried the things I wanted?”

I shook my head. “You can’t change who you are.”

She sucked in a breath. “Life is malleable.”

I started to sit back, to draw away from her in disagreement, but her hand snapped out and caught my wrist. “Listen to me. You think you’re the same person as you were when you were a child because you’re still sick and you’re still half.”

I tried to keep my face still, tried not to show how much it surprised me that she could say that so confidently, know it was true. Tried not to show her how it made me want to clench my teeth and turn away from her.

“You’re not, though,” she continued. “You were a timid little boy and then a nervous, beautiful teenager, and I worshipped you.” She blinked, and I did look away then, and she did too, before she glanced back up at me. I felt her eyes on me and made myself face her. “I don’t know if it was because you left, or because of your mother, or just because you had time, but when I saw you again after you came back, you weren’t the same. You were stronger. Fierce. You made me nervous. You scared me, and I didn’t know how to be around you, because you weren’t you anymore. That’s what I thought.”

She took a breath, slowing her rapid speech. “Before, you had a wall around yourself to keep people out, but now you don’t need one. They know not to mess with you. Now it’s as if you project all that energy out, instead of holding it in. You have some kind of confidence, some kind of massive presence, that radiates from you, and I don’t know where it came from, but it was never there when we were children.”

Her words stunned me. They cut me down. I was smaller and larger at the same time, a tiny thing in her hand that she believed was great. “And you don’t worship me anymore,” I said. I was trying for a joke, to dissipate this heavy atmosphere between us, but it came out flat, a question that was really a bitter statement.

She shook her head. Her hand still held my wrist, soft and smooth against my skin. “My heart of hearts always worships you.” Her lips rose at the corner, like Kin’s did when he was sad. “But you left. You left me there with the fey, alone. You took all that time we could have had together. All that time we’ll never get back now. I’ll always hold that against you.” She smiled then, a full smile that showed me how lonely she had been.

I couldn’t look at her while she was smiling like that. “I’m sorry.”

She shook her head slowly, her eyes down, and sat back. Her hand slid away. “It’s a foolish thing for me to be angry about. Unfair. But I was. I hated you. And I couldn’t stop.”

“So why this, now?” These meals together, the tea she brewed, the things she said to Kin for my benefit. This tenuous thing between us.

She brushed at her bangs with her hand. “It’s easy to hate someone you can’t see, can’t talk to. So easy to be bitter. But when you’re here, always around . . . It’s too hard to hold on to that. When you’re kind to me, even when I exasperate you. When you run me favors. When I remember how you cared for me before. Every time I see you I remember what we had before.” She wasn’t meeting my eyes. She laughed, a harsh little sound, and smiled at nothing. “You make me nervous, but I want to be with you. I finally figured out that you’re the same person. You’re just even more than you had been before. Like you’ve been distilled. And I can’t stay as angry when I see now how difficult everything was for you. I never really understood that as a child.”

“Saben,” I started.

Her eyes came back up to mine. “Besides,” she said, the slight, callous tone sneaking back into her voice, “I realized you might die.” Her words were so harsh. But when she said them, her face crumpled in on itself, just for a second, like the words had been toxic. Like they’d burned her.

“That’s a terrible reason to forgive someone,” I said. I stared at the table. I didn’t want to see her face.

She laughed. “I know. But I didn’t have a very good reason for being angry to begin with.”

“Do you want to go to the beach?”

Kin raised his eyebrows, but his eyes didn’t leave the book he was reading. I opened the refrigerator door again. I didn’t want anything to eat. I just wanted to feel the cold on my face.

“No. Do you?”

I swung the door a little and looked at him over it. “No. I hate the beach.”

He put the book down this time, his expression questioning. He was sitting at the kitchen table, his legs stretched out in front of him, his feet crossed, his shoulders low against the back of the chair. I could see the webbing between his toes, the thin, silky fins that trailed down the backs of his ankles. There were green scales on the tops of his feet, and they shimmered in the sun coming through the window. He looked as good there, in my kitchen, as I’d thought he would the first time I’d seen him in my house.

“There are mer there,” I explained. He smiled, his mouth widening slowly. I realized what I’d said. “I didn’t mean like . . .”

He waved his hand at me, still grinning. “I get it.”

I shut the fridge door and slumped against it. “I thought you might want to go, though.”

He cocked his head at me. “Do you know where I was born?”

I shook my head.

“A lake.”

“But I thought . . .”

He shook his head. He was still smiling, like the whole thing was entirely amusing. “I’m not a fish, Luca. There’s no reason I have to live in salt water.” He moved his hand over the table, taking it and the kitchen in with the sweep. “Or in water at all.”

I bit my lip, thoughtful. “Isn’t it more comfortable, though?” I knew it had to be. He was a man, just like I was a man, but he was also something else. I might not have known much about yokai or ningyo, but I knew fey. I knew that elementals and spirits and fey that came from the sea or the forest or the desert or the snow were better in those places. That the nature was easier on them.

Kin’s fingers skimmed over the spine of the book. “Maybe I’m contrary,” he said, “but I’m more comfortable where I prefer to be. Not where my genes dictate I live. If I go to the sea, it’ll be because I’m craving sun and salt like any other beach lover. Not because I need it to survive. I don’t.”

He was watching me, his eyes staring into me. It was unnerving. He looked at me because he wanted to look. He wanted me to hear everything behind his words. He wanted me to know he wanted me, wanted me to know him. I’d never had anyone look at me like that before. It made me self-conscious. My hand moved by itself and rubbed the back of my neck, touched the short hair there, and I wondered why he didn’t mind the color. Why he didn’t mind the way I was too pale, the way my nose and my jaw were a little too sharp, slightly too long. He could have had anyone. He was lovely, even among the fey, and he could have had someone who matched how amazing he was in a second. But he had picked me.

I turned back toward the fridge.

“Luca.” His voice was light, like he was giddy on whatever he was thinking, a laugh behind it.

“Hmm?” I had the door open again. I was staring into the fridge but not seeing anything. All I could feel was his eyes on me.

“You’re better than water.”

I laughed, startled, and shut the door. “Don’t say that.”

“You are.” He held his hands out. “You really are.”

I went to him, and he put his arms around my waist and laid his head against my side. “Are you coming with me to see Riyad?”

Kin pushed his forehead against me. “He makes me nervous.”

“Oh. Don’t be, though. He’s . . . he’s one of the best people I know.”

He sighed. “Yeah. But you know what I mean.”

I nodded and ran my fingers through Kin’s hair. I knew. Riyad had seen so much, and it was all right there, in him and around him. Sometimes when I was with him it was like I could feel all that time pouring out of him, swirling around him, and sometimes it seemed like it would reach out and grab me too. It was overwhelming.

“Come with me,” I said anyway. “I want to be with you.”

He pushed his fingers against my spine, making me bend in to him. “All right.”

Riyad didn’t remark on Kin’s presence. He invited us inside like he’d been expecting both of us, instead of just me. Maybe he had.

I liked being in Riyad’s house. I’d spent a good deal of time in it as a child. It was welcoming because it was familiar, but I thought it would have felt that way regardless of how often I’d been there. The floors, the table and chairs, the molding around the ceiling were all rich, dark wood. In the living room, he’d spread thick rugs, and his couch and the chairs all had blankets thrown over them, each a bright red or yellow or sky blue, all inviting and comforting, softening any sharp angles, waiting for someone to sit down and relax. There were no pictures, but tucked into corners, along window ledges, hanging from the pull of a cabinet door, were small items that were obviously personal. A bunch of old flowers, gone gray with age, tied with a silk ribbon, sat next to a small ceramic cat. A trio of minute green glass bottles were displayed near the window, so the light could pass through them. An abstract piece of silverwork was propped up by his books on a shelf. Over them hung a drawing of my father’s house that I’d done years ago. It was all so personal, the collection of a long life, a life that Riyad had molded into something supple and comfortable and warm.

In the kitchen, the counter was butcher block squares with blunt edges. The wood was worn smooth like velvet. The room was small, but neat, and we crowded into the little space. On the red tile floor, Riyad had laid out three baskets. I glanced at him, and his eyes softened. I nodded, to thank him, or just acknowledge that he was right about so many things. He handed one basket to me, another to Kin, and took the third for himself. Then he opened the back door, and we followed him out into the yard.

Unlike the rest of his land, which was mostly filled with vines and bushes, Riyad had trees in his backyard. They weren’t planted in any kind of rows. Some were clustered near the house, a few too close, in danger of scraping tiles off his roof. Others spread from the house for a long way, meandering up a hill, until they were far enough away that I couldn’t tell one’s leaves from the next’s.

“I planted them as I pleased,” Riyad explained to Kin. He had his hand against the nearest tree. I swear I saw it lean into him, just a little, like it knew who he was. His fingers rubbed against the bark idly. “So the varieties are quite mixed.”

Kin nodded. He didn’t seem ruffled in the least, his back perfectly straight, the basket dangling easily from one hand. He held himself a bit too still, though, and I knew he was nervous.

“The apples are done for the year,” Riyad said, turning to look out at the trees. He glanced around, and I thought he probably knew where each type of tree was, exactly. “Some of the pears are coming in. But I think the persimmons are ready now.”

Kin laughed. “Persimmons?” His hand jerked, like he wanted to raise it and cover his mouth.

Riyad gave him a small smile. “I have always enjoyed them.”

Kin’s face smoothed, but some of the tension left him. He nodded and stared at Riyad in the way he did with me that made my heart race with nerves because it was so direct. Riyad’s smile widened.

“You know what to look for, then?”

“It would be helpful if you reminded me.” Kin’s words were formal, but he was smiling.

Riyad led us around a small garden. Half of it was dry and dead now, but at the other end, I saw pumpkins growing on their vines, and cauliflower and winter squash. I hadn’t been in the backyard for years, and for the first time, it occurred to me that Riyad lived here off what he grew. I knew my father brought him things sometimes, like I did, and as I assumed Saben and others sometimes did. But Riyad was basically alone in this house, on this plot of land. That was the way he wanted it. If he’d needed more companionship, he would live closer to my father and the other fey. I knew that my father wanted him near. But Riyad stayed out here by himself, and if it came to it, if, for some reason, no one came to visit him, he could still take care of himself perfectly well.

Riyad led us to a tallish, spindly kind of tree. Despite how slender its trunk and branches were, it was robust. Its leaves were thin but glossy, and on each branch, even the smallest ones, hung fruit. They looked almost like oranges, although that would have made it the most oranges I’d ever seen on one tree. The branches were weighty with them, fruit packed into what seemed like every available space. They weren’t quite the right neon color for oranges, either. Their color was more organic, ranging from pale yellow to gold to nearly red. They were beautiful. In the shade from the other trees, with the late-afternoon sunlight hitting them only occasionally, the fruit looked like miniature lanterns strung through the tree, their dull skins glowing. When the breeze blew through, they swayed a little. I reached up to brush one with my fingers, and it bumped against my hand, cool and smooth.

“If the color is rich, pick them,” Riyad said. He stuck his hand into his basket and pulled out a small knife. He reached with it over his head, taking a fruit in one hand and cutting at the top, leaving a few dried leaves at the head of it. He held it out to me. “If they’re soft—very soft—they’re ripe. If they’re hard, they’ll be bitter. They’ll ripen indoors, but no sense in picking too many too early when we don’t need them all at once.”

I took the fruit he offered. “Don’t squeeze,” Kin said, and I loosened my fingers. The fruit fit neat in my palm, and was liquid-like under the tight skin. I brought it to my nose and sniffed. It didn’t smell like much of anything except freshness and cold nights.

Kin took the persimmon from me and brought out his own knife from the basket. I glanced at Riyad and saw that he was watching us, a faraway smile on his face. I looked back at Kin. On one side of the fruit, he made two intersecting cuts, like an X, then handed it back with the cut piece up.

“You can probably just squeeze it out,” he said, gesturing to me to bring the fruit to my mouth. “It’s very ripe.”

I did as he said, raising it to my lips and giving the back a push with my fingers. Velvety, smooth fruit, almost a pulp, slipped into my mouth. The flavor was mild and pumpkin-like, sweeter than I’d expected, with a hint of bitterness underneath. It was exotic and delicious, not quite like anything I’d ever had before.

Kin and Riyad were watching me. “I love it,” I told them.

Kin grinned at me. Riyad nodded. “You’ve never had one? In all your travels?”

I shook my head. I’d eaten a lot of strange things, but I thought I would have remembered this. How beautiful the fruit was, like a drop of light that fit perfectly in my hand. I’d never had one here at Riyad’s, either—I’d always visited in the summers with my father. Maybe they had never been quite ripe then, and I’d missed the chance.

“You finish that,” Riyad said. “Kin will help me set up the stepladders. We’ll do this tree first. There’s one more farther back.”

While I ate the rest, Kin and Riyad set up short stepladders, just under the branches, so that we could reach the fruit. We took turns standing on them and cutting, passing the fruit down to whoever was on the ground, to be laid in the soft cloth lining the baskets, until our arms got tired and we switched. The work was undemanding and the weather was cool but fine. When I stood on the ladder, I could see the blue sky through the tree branches. The fruit around me smelled earthy. The back garden was at the start of a gentle slope, and when I looked out, I could see the house and the fields and farther, the city a gray smudge against the horizon. All of it was a bit blurred with the elevation, like the city and its surroundings weren’t quite real. And when I leaned down to pass the fruit to Kin, when I focused on only where I was and not what was beyond the farm, it seemed that we were tucked away back here, like the rest of the world had stopped and didn’t matter. As a child, I’d never been able to imagine myself in a fairy-tale land like other kids had. I’d known that place and I’d known it to be as real and as challenging as the world humans lived in. But here in Riyad’s back garden, I thought maybe I understood what those kids were searching for. An escape, for a moment. A place that made them feel safe and at peace and a little dazzled.

We filled the baskets and brought the fruit inside. We lined the persimmons up on the counter and went back out to Riyad’s second tree, much farther up the hill, in the back acres where we couldn’t see the house. This tree was taller, and we couldn’t reach the top fruit, even with the short ladders. Riyad said that was fine. He told us to leave it for the birds.

When we finished harvesting everything we could, the three of us sat around the base of the tree and Riyad selected three ripe fruits. He passed one to each of us, and we ate them. It was messy, and I had to lick my fingers clean, but I didn’t mind. I was even more part of a fantasy world here, farther back. The air was loud with the noises of the breeze and the birds and small creatures rustling through the grass, but it was devoid of cars and the hum machines make and any kind of human voice, until we spoke. I bumped my shoulder against Kin’s, and he ran his fingers through the hair at my temple, his fingertips lingering on my skin.

Riyad was smiling at us, lazy in the flickering shade. He glanced away and sorted through the fruit in his basket, his fingers careful so as not to bruise the persimmons.

“Did you have persimmons as a child?” I asked.

He glanced up, then leaned back against the tree trunk. “No. We had dates. Figs. Grapes. Things like that.” His eyes opened. “Although the trade routes brought many things through.”

Kin leaned around me to see Riyad. “You used the trade routes?” His question was still a little formal, his words precise and neat, but somewhere during the afternoon, I thought he’d lost some of the hesitation he had around Riyad.

Riyad nodded. “Even fey can’t make oranges fall from the sky. We can’t make milk from thin air, can’t weave without silk thread. We used the trade routes and the bazaars as much as the humans. With the humans. We had to.”

Kin’s fingers played idly on my knee. “I don’t know that the yokai would do that. Not most of them.”

Riyad nodded again, amiable. “Perhaps not as openly,” he said, which was not really an agreement.

“Do you miss it?” I asked Riyad. I wasn’t sure, exactly, where the question had come from. It was just that, with all the time I’d spent with Riyad, I’d never asked him very much about his past. Not that far back. I guess all kids think that adults only exist within a child’s time frame. And Riyad’s time frame was so vast as to be unimaginable. But I wanted to know, I realized. About how he’d grown up. What he’d seen. About his life.

He held my eyes and nodded. “I do. Sometimes.”

“Do you . . . do you ever want to go back?” I’d gone, instead. He’d sent me to his homeland, a starting place to journey out from. But now I wondered if he’d done it as a way to send himself back, at least in some fashion.

He gave me a soft smile, made strong and lovely by all those years. But it was worn too. A little bit sad. “Not anymore. I must keep moving forward, now.”

His words arrowed into me. He didn’t know, I was sure, about what Kin had offered me. I didn’t fool myself into thinking it. But what he’d said nudged something inside me. I’d always been going forward too. Looking, seeking, moving on to the next place, the next person, the next language. It was only since I’d come home that I’d been in any kind of stasis. And I was enjoying that respite well enough. It was a choice I’d made. But I didn’t want to stay still forever. I wanted to always keep moving forward too.

Maybe Riyad saw something of what I was thinking on my face. He reached out and gripped my hand, squeezing my fingers in his. Then he leaned forward, to see Kin. “What fruit did you have as a child?” he asked him.

Kin tilted his head back, going right along with the subject change. I decided to go with it too, and let my thoughts sit until I could poke at them by myself. He hummed, thinking. “Persimmons. Oranges. Pomegranates. Plums, although the yokai complained that they weren’t right. My mother grew melons. Some sweet and some not. The yokai always came for those.”

“Did you live with the yokai?” I asked. It occurred to me that I didn’t know where he’d come from. He’d told me this morning that he’d been born in a lake, but I didn’t know where the lake was, or who had lived there with him.

He shook his head. “The yokai were around, often. But I lived in a regular house with my parents.” His fingers went still against me, and he looked down into my face. “We always lived at the lake because the yokai were afraid of Catherine. My human mother. They shunned us, but my mother, Midori, wouldn’t give her up. So the lake was outside the yokai’s territory, but close enough that we could be near them.” He gave me his tiny grin. “So I never lived in the ocean.”

I swallowed. Riyad was watching us and listening, but this felt private, now. “What happened to her?” I’d noted the way he used the past tense.

He shrugged, but his eyes went far away. “She grew old. She got sick. She died. It was about a year ago.”

“I’m sorry, Kin.”

He shook his head.

I swallowed. “And your . . . Midori?”

“She lives at the lake still. The yokai won’t have her. They think Catherine tainted her with her humanness.” He shrugged. “She doesn’t want to leave, anyway.”

I bit my lip. I wanted to ask him a million things, about his past, about his life and his family. But this wasn’t the place. All of that would need to wait, so instead, I stared up at him, and he smiled. He moved his hand and brushed it against mine, so our fingers slid together. Riyad didn’t make a sound. I could still feel him there, behind me, but he would give as long as we wanted, even though we were having what should have been a private moment in front of him.

Kin seemed to understood that there were things I wanted to say but couldn’t, and I could see that he felt the same. We looked away from each other, content to let it go for now, and Riyad started a different conversation up, smooth, like there had been no break.

I half listened to Riyad and Kin talk. I tipped my head against the tree, let the bark catch in my hair, and gazed out, down the slope. Down onto the fields and the vineyard and the tree line where the forest started, and beyond that, to where I could see the vast, deep blue stretch of sky. The breeze was cool on my skin, just enough to remind me that we were outside and it was autumn, the turn of seasons. That life was moving around us.

I felt terrible about Kin’s human mother. I knew what it was like to lose a parent. I knew the space it left, the hole that never went away. There’s a fullness that you never realize is there, because it’s so much a piece of you. A space made just for that person, a place for all that love to go. That safety, like a net tucked inside your heart, to always catch you. When my mother had died, I’d found that space empty, and it had frightened me terribly. I hadn’t known what to do with myself, how to keep going without anything there. If my father and Riyad hadn’t given me somewhere else to go, something else to focus on, I wasn’t sure what would have happened.

I thought again about the impermanence of things. Kin’s mother, my mother, their lives so short, compared to the fey. Too short, even, for humans. But they’d been so bright. They’d left such a mark on us, on Kin’s mother and my father and who knows how many other people. Now they were gone, and we mourned them, and it was terrible. A terrible thing. But I remembered, too, my mother smiling up at me from her hospital bed. She hadn’t wanted to die. I knew that. But she wouldn’t have wanted forever, either. At least, I didn’t think so. I thought, at some point, she would have looked forward to a change. To whatever came next. To the mystery of it.

We sat for a while longer, and then we stood and started to gather the baskets so we could head back. I was laughing at something Riyad had said. I bent to grab the basket handle. As my head dipped, my vision went black. My balance went from me, but I couldn’t tell where I was because I couldn’t see, and my body felt like paper, like it had no substance. And then I heard myself smack into the ground.

When I woke up, I was on Riyad’s couch, and he was crouched in front of me. His hand was on my forehead, his fingers brushing over the short fringe of hair that would have been bangs if I’d let it grow.

“I’ve not been frightened like that in quite a long time,” he said, his voice utterly calm.

“I’m sorry.”

He pulled his hand away. He touched my cheek as he drew it back, soft, a tiny caress. It reminded me of the way he’d stroked my hair when I was small. When I was only tall enough to come up to his hip, and his hand could rest perfectly on my head.

“Do you know what happened?”

I shook my head.

“You fainted. Your body went rigid,” he said, his words blunt, his tone still calm and quiet. “I believe you had a small seizure. When you went limp, Kin carried you here.”

“How long was I out?”

“Maybe half an hour.”

“Where’s Kin?”

Riyad sighed. “Outside, drinking a glass of water.” His hand went back to my hair, like he couldn’t help touching me. “He was so worried, Luca. He wouldn’t leave you alone. I had to send him away. I thought he would make himself sick.”

I tried to picture Kin working himself into a frenzy. All I could picture was his face, tight with worry, the way he looked at me whenever I grimaced or touched a sore spot when I thought he wasn’t watching.

I drew in a few breaths, trying to decide whether I was awake. I wasn’t dizzy or even disoriented. I felt, instead, like I’d had a nap and just woken up from it. The pulsing ache that radiated out from my spine and my back and my arms was the only thing that told me I’d passed out.

“Have you ever seen anyone like me?” I asked Riyad. There were a lot of things I could have said in that minute, but this was what I wanted to know. Needed to know, right then. And I knew Riyad had been all over the world. He’d met more people than I ever would.

But he shook his head. His thumb moved over my forehead in a pattern, like he was anointing me. His eyes were too far away to pay attention to what he was doing though. “It’s so good,” he said, not quite meeting my eyes. “The magic. The fey blood. And the human part too. When your father told me you would be born, I never imagined that anything would go wrong. I thought it would be wonderful.” His eyes focused on me. “It was. You are. But . . .”

I tried to smile. “But I’m flawed.”

He shook his head. “I love you. Like you were mine, I love you. I don’t know what fey feel for their children, or humans, for that matter, but I imagine it’s like this. I wouldn’t change you. In my mind, you’re perfect. But I would make you well. If there was anything I could give, I would give it for that.”

It was odd to hear those words come from a face that seemed younger than mine. I knew he meant it, though, and when I looked into his eyes, they were honest and pained and not young at all. He would never pass for human again. No matter how much glamour he used, people would know, deep in their bones, that he was different. That he was not one of them. His eyes were too deep. I could get lost in how far down they went. It was frightening, but now the weight of that behind what he’d said made me feel strong. It made me feel like I could never brush off his words. His love was a part of me because he’d planted it in me.

I closed my eyes and concentrated on his touch. I was trying not to cry. Riyad let me be. His fingers moved through my hair, along my ear, soothing. He said nothing, made no sound. His touch, his presence, the words he’d said, sent me into a kind of cocoon. I was safe here, with his hand on me and my eyes closed, and I wanted to stay like that and not think.

“Kin made something for you to drink,” Riyad said after a long minute. I opened my eyes and came back to earth. He was watching me. His eyes said to let the conversation, the things he’d said, go, to return to normalcy. I nodded.

He turned and reached behind himself for a glass. I sat up. My body protested against the movement. I was sore all over, like I’d worked out too hard, or someone had beaten me with a stick, or both. I took the glass. It was cool in my hands. The drink inside it seemed to be giving off something that wasn’t exactly heat. It was more of a sensation, a tingling in my fingers like static electricity, rather than a warmth. Riyad nodded at me, urging me to drink. The liquid was greenish and dark, an unappealing color. It smelled good, though, like fresh grass and herbs and something citrusy. I sipped at it. It tasted almost smoky. The flavor was rich, not raw and sharp like vegetable drinks I’d had in the past. It coated my throat with something thin and silky. It moved down toward my stomach, leaving a little of itself as it went. It felt good, like a salve on everything that was raw inside me.

When I was done, Riyad took the glass from me. As he was turning to place it on the table, he said, “I’m sorry I asked you to work.”

“No,” I protested. “It wasn’t that. I can guarantee it had nothing to do with that.” I hadn’t been tired. I wasn’t worn out by picking the fruit. I’d passed out the other day just walking through Saben’s door. I leaned forward and caught his eye. “I loved being out there in the trees. I don’t want that taken away because of what’s happening inside me.” My hand curled into a fist on my knee. “I don’t want to live a half life. I don’t want to be cautious.” I heard my voice getting louder, but I couldn’t stop it.

Riyad took my shoulders in his hands. “All right. I’m sorry. I understand.”

I took a deep breath. I was so on edge, like I was one emotion one second, and another the next. I couldn’t control myself. I couldn’t predict what I would do next. “I’m sorry.”

He shook his head. “You have every right. You can live however you want. It was wrong of me to imply otherwise. And I do understand that. I understand all of it.”

I was near tears again. “I know you do.” I breathed in, trying to calm myself, to steady my nerves. “I love you too,” I blurted out, negating any calming I’d done. My voice cracked. I’d reverted back to being a little kid in front of him. “I feel the same.”

He pulled me toward him, gathering me in and holding me against him. “That means a great deal to me,” he said against my ear. His voice wasn’t much more than a whisper, and it sounded no steadier than mine.

Kin took me home. We’d taken my car, but he stuffed me into the passenger seat, and I was happy to let him drive. My hands were still shaking enough that I wouldn’t have wanted to drive unless I had to. I sat back instead, and watched him while he steered us home.

“I’m sorry.” Kin was looking straight ahead. His fingers were almost white around the wheel.

I turned to him. “Isn’t that what I’m supposed to say?”

“I mean, I should have been paying more attention. I didn’t know you weren’t feeling well.”

I looked away. “I felt fine.”

“Still,” he pushed. “That’s my job, to notice. I should have seen—”

I realized the brief argument I’d had with Riyad must have come from a discussion he and Kin had had together while I was out. I sliced my hand through the air, cutting him off. “Don’t do this. Don’t coddle me.” My gesture, my voice, were harsher than they should have been. I was tired in a bone-deep way, like whatever had happened to me had beaten the shit out of me. I didn’t have any patience left, and I didn’t want to have this conversation over again, when I’d just finished having it with Riyad.

“Luca . . .”

“Do I look like I can’t handle myself? Like I don’t know my own fucking body?” I was raising my voice. I was sitting straighter and straighter in the seat, my shoulders going tight, my body pitching forward and angling toward him. “Is that what you think?”

Kin’s hands gripped the wheel harder. His body was as tight as mine, his face going red. I didn’t think about stopping, about closing my mouth. Kin never tiptoed around me, never even came close to suggesting that I couldn’t or shouldn’t do some things. I hadn’t realized it before, but I loved that. I needed it. The idea that he was playing cautious now infuriated me.

“You think I can’t take care of myself?” I saw Kin’s jaw clench, his hands go impossibly tighter, clamping down. “You think I need you and Riyad and Saben and my father to always keep me in line because I can’t do it myself?”

He slammed his hands down on the wheel. “I think you passed out on your fucking face! I think you went down like a ton of fucking bricks! I think you had a seizure that scared the hell out of me! I thought you were dead! When you went still, I thought you had died!”

He shrank back against the seat, as if, once the outburst was over, he had nothing left to keep him upright. I wanted to shrink into my seat too. I’d never seen Kin yell like that. I’d never seen him look like such a wreck. His hands were sweaty, no longer tight, but too damp to hold the wheel, sliding on the leather, and when he reached up to push his hair out of his face, I could see that his fingers were shaking. He was shaking all over. His breath came in gasps.

The fight ran out of me like a physical thing, like water running off my skin. “Pull over,” I said, keeping my voice quiet. I reached for his wrist. “Just pull over for a second.” Inside, I was a mess at what he’d said, but I just wanted to be calm right then, just wanted him to get off the road.

He nodded, even that movement unsteady. There was no one behind us, the road never very busy here, but he flicked his blinker on, then off right away. He pulled onto a dirt patch by the side of the road. As soon as he set the car in park, he folded forward, crushing his hands to the steering wheel with his forehead.

“Kin.” I didn’t know how to apologize for something I wasn’t really sorry for, for something that had hurt me just as much as it had hurt him, if in a completely different way. I reached out to him, but I wasn’t sure whether I should touch him or not. My hand hovered, uncertain, over his back.

“I don’t want to coddle you,” he said after a long, tense moment. His voice came out muffled by his arms and the dash. “I know you’re not weak. I know you’ll always want to do things for yourself. Even if you don’t have the strength to lift a piece of paper.”

I laughed, startled.

He rocked his head to the side so he could see me. “And I’ll let you.”

I pressed my lips together. “Thank you.”

“It’s not my call. It’s yours. It’ll always be yours to decide.”

I pushed my fingers through my hair. My hands felt like they didn’t belong to me, unsteady and numb. “I stuck you with me. You get a say.”

“You didn’t trap me.” His voice was soft now, calm and no longer angry. He just sounded hurt. Wounded. His eyes were too dark, too shiny. His body was limp, like it wanted to stay draped over that steering wheel for as long as it could. “I chose.”

I shook my head a little. “I should have left you alone.”

“Don’t say that. Please don’t.”

I bit my lip. Both of us were right, in ways, and I didn’t want to point out what idiots that made us.

“I don’t think I’ll just drop dead,” I said after a minute. I rolled my eyes to the roof of the car. I was going for a light tone, but I couldn’t look at him while I said it. I was all wobbly like I had been at Riyad’s, on the couch. Like I was going in too many different directions and I would break apart.

Kin sighed. “What if you’d stopped breathing? What if your body just couldn’t take it?” He laughed, but it was a hard sound that hurt when it hit me. “What if you’d smacked your head when you fell? You could have died up there in those trees, Luca. Don’t baby me if I can’t do the same with you.”

I couldn’t meet his eyes. I knew he was staring at me like he always did, his gaze so calm, just watching, and I couldn’t meet it. I looked at his hands, loose on the wheel now, his wrists just flexed, his fingers still a little tense. I wanted to grab him, to get those hands to touch me. I wanted his arms around me so that we’d be connected by something tangible and this awkwardness between us would disappear. But I didn’t want this to be glossed over and forgotten. I wanted to get through this conversation so that it would be a part of us, instead of something we’d pushed aside. This was important.

“Are you angry with me?” I asked, because I had to, because it was gnawing at my bones to know.

He sat up quickly. “Of course not. How could I be mad at you for being sick?” He leaned toward me. “I was scared, Luca. Riyad thought I was going to lose it, and I thought I might too. I was just so . . .” He raised a hand, dropped it. “You scared me.” He inhaled, and it sounded shaky too.

His words took all the breath out of me, until I wanted to gasp for air. “Is it too much?” I asked, before I could decide not to ask it. I had to offer him an out. It had to be done, but I had to do it now, fast, or I’d never be able to. “I don’t want you to have to feel that. You don’t have to stay. If it’s too much.”

He was shaking his head before I even finished. “I can’t leave. Not now.”

My chest was too tight. “No?”

“No.” He caught my eye, reached up, and brushed his hair back from his face. “I don’t want to go.”

“Ah.” I was so afraid it wasn’t true, that this would wear Kin down until he couldn’t take it anymore. But I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe so much that he would stay. I wanted all of this to be fixed, all the questioning and the wondering and the hurting. I wanted it to stop, and I couldn’t make it. And here was Kin, saying these lovely, wonderful things that cut right into the deepest parts of me. It all built up inside of me, and when he said he didn’t want to go, it walloped into me and broke the dam, and I started to cry.

“I’m really tired,” I said, wiping at my eyes. “I’m sorry.”

He pushed himself across the seat and pulled me to him. He drew me in and held me, like Riyad had, and I knew he didn’t care if I cried all over him, if that was what I needed. I decided I would believe in that, for right now. I would hold on to that and let the rest go.