When I was done, Kin nodded, but he didn’t say anything else. He washed his hands, dried them on the towel, then came around the counter and held them out in front of him, like he was asking me something. I wasn’t sure what he was going to do, but I nodded and turned where I was sitting, so he could reach me. He touched me, just his fingertips, cool and soft, slightly callused, at my jawline. Then his hands dipped lower, his fingers reaching for my lymph nodes, pressing in just a little. He tilted my head up and stared down at me, searching my eyes, running his gaze over my face, looking for I don’t know what. He stepped back and walked away, disappearing into the depths of the house. A minute later, he came back with an honest-to-god, old-fashioned, horn-shaped stethoscope. I almost laughed, because it seemed like such an odd clash of worlds, but I couldn’t quite. He gestured with it, asking permission, and I nodded. He leaned closer and moved it around my chest, listening, his ear pressed to the other end.

When he was done, he stepped back. I shivered, even though I wasn’t cold. Kin’s examination had been like most of the examinations I’d endured in my life. But it had been different too. It was like Kin was seeing me, a person, and not a puzzle or a mystery or a thing that shouldn’t be. When he considered me now, contemplating, it seemed like he was considering me, and not whatever it was that was wreaking havoc inside me.

“I think you’re right,” he said at last. “I don’t know what it is. But I think your fey pieces—something in your blood, a gland, an enzyme, or the way your body takes in energy and turns it into magic and glamour, something—is working incorrectly and poisoning you. I don’t know enough about fey anatomy. No one does. There isn’t a study on it. So I wouldn’t know what was going wrong. Or how to fix it.”

There it was. That disappointment flaring to life. Even though I had tried not to hope at all, had tried not to let that in because the disappointment always followed it so closely. Even though I’d been sure this wouldn’t turn out any different. And it was so big and so sharp, and it cut so much deeper than it should have. I’d known Kin wouldn’t be the miracle that would fix me, right here at home, in my father’s court, when I’d searched the world for a cure. I’d known, and I’d accepted it. But I always got my hopes up anyway. And I always ended up feeling like this.

Kin must have seen something on my face, read something in my expression, because he stepped closer again. He reached out and touched his fingers to the edge of my jaw like he had before. But it was completely different this time, intimate and gentle and sweet. And sorry.

“Let me think about it,” he told me. “Let me . . . ask some questions. Do some research. And then I’ll come see you with what I’ve found.”

I nodded, letting the weight of that disappointment settle on me. It was bad, heavy and bitter. But maybe I’d grown used to that sensation, because when I looked up and found Kin looking back at me, it wasn’t quite as terrible as it had been before. He was watching me like he was the one who’d been broken, like whatever disappointment, whatever loss of hope I was experiencing was being reflected onto him. Like he wanted to do better for me, and he couldn’t.

I liked him, I realized. He was too beautiful and a little abrupt and a lot strange, but he’d been kind and honest. I liked him. And something inside me wanted him to like me back. And as much as I understood the expression on his face, as much as I understood the kindness behind it, I didn’t want it. I didn’t want him to look at me like I was sad. Like I was a tragedy.

He walked me to the door and opened it for me, but before I could duck out, he caught my wrist, turned me back around to face him. “It doesn’t bother me,” he said. “Not that you’re half. Not that you’re sick.” His cheeks went pink. “I mean, it bothers me that you’re sick. I wish you weren’t. But that doesn’t . . . doesn’t make me not want to see you again.”

“Why? So you can try to fix me?”

“I want to do what I can, yes. But I liked spending the afternoon with you, Luca.” He sounded almost angry about it, fierce.

I shrugged, trying not to let him see what his words did to me. How they made my breath catch, made me happy even though everything about this afternoon should have depressed me. I didn’t believe he could heal me, though. And I wasn’t positive he hadn’t said he liked spending time with me as some form of pity. But I didn’t want to just . . . end things if I didn’t have to. “All right. Maybe I’ll see you again, then.”

I slipped past him, out the door, and I didn’t look back until I was in my car.