Saben didn’t know much about the healer at all, except that he was here in the city, that he’d come up from a short ways south, apparently because there was more for him to do here. That he was a yokai and a man. That my father had heard about him through whatever fey grapevine he was tapped into and decided I needed to go. She didn’t know where this healer slept, where he lived, who he was aligned with in the fey world. She had set up a meeting through some of her people, the string of young fey who trailed around after her, so she’d never even spoken to him.

I was supposed to meet him in a park. It was a big park, with lots of tucked-away spots to get lost in, and it was neutral territory. Clever, but most fey were interested in taking care of themselves above all else, so it wasn’t really surprising. Saben told me to go in the afternoon, didn’t even give me a definitive time. That was more annoying than trucking it down to the park to see a fey I didn’t even really want to meet, because I knew how fey worked, how they thought of time as this malleable thing they could play with. I knew there was every chance I’d show up, and the yokai wouldn’t, and my day would be shot.

But on the other hand, it wasn’t as if I had much else to do, either.

Saben had told me to walk to one end of the park, to a tiny pond with an even tinier waterfall. The spot was hidden behind a copse of trees, and it was chilly enough in the early evening that there weren’t too many other people around. The pond had a small clearing around it, a flat stretch of grass between the trees and the water. I stood on the edge of the tree line, a glamour pulled around me to hide myself, and looked for the man I was supposed to meet.

I didn’t see anything at first, and I figured I’d been right that he would be flighty, like all the other fey I knew, that he’d forget he was supposed to meet me, distracted by something more interesting. But then there was a short splash, a spray of water from the pond, and I realized a man was swimming to shore. He rose a little way out of the water, the sun sparkling off the droplets beading on his skin. His hair was black and slicked back, showing off the long planes of his face. He shook his head, brushed his hands down his arms. Then he stepped to the bank of the pond, out of the water. He stooped and picked up a long piece of cloth and draped it around his waist. It was almost like a skirt, but not quite.

I watched him for a second. There was something familiar about him, about the graceful way he moved. He bent forward again, picking up something else off the ground, and I saw a thick line of blue-green scales running down his back. I’d seen those same scales before—not on his back, but on his face and his wrists. In the club, with the lights bouncing off them and making them shine, while he tipped his head back and gave himself over to the music.

I didn’t step out or call to him. I just dropped the minimal glamour I’d been holding, and the minute I did, he turned to where I was standing against the tree. I took a step forward.

Now that I was here, I wasn’t sure what should happen next. I’d been planning to brush him off, to do whatever it’d take to make my father believe I’d completed his task, and leave. But now this man was staring at me, and I knew that he recognized me too, remembered me from that brief, sharp stare we’d shared the night before. He didn’t make a move toward me, though. Didn’t speak. He just stood there, his back straight, his chest bare, water dripping off the ends of his hair, wetting his cheeks and his jaw and the line of his shoulders. He was so regal, so strong and lovely, as lovely as when I first saw him.

I thought of Saben and my father, the icy, excruciatingly polite high-court fey that they were. Sidhe, same as I was. They used formality and manners as weapons, always had them to fall back on, and I could do the same here. I rested my hand, tucked into a fist, against my chest and bowed.

When I rose from it, the man stepped toward me. He faced me, his shoulders back, his hands loose at his sides. He was slender, maybe small by some standards, but standing there, he was like cut glass, like copper wire. It seemed as if he’d draw blood if I touched him. Scales shimmered unevenly over his skin—along his left cheekbone, down the right side of his neck, tapering to nothing over the first two knuckles of his right hand.

He made a small bow, not as deep as mine, in my direction. I waited.

“Did you come from the sidhe court?” His English was so flawless it had to be his first language.

“You’re not Japanese.” I’d expected him to have a foreign accent, to be from somewhere that wasn’t here, but it didn’t sound like he’d come from farther than the next county over.

He shook his head once and clicked his tongue. “You’re not fey.”

“Not completely.” There was a part of me that wanted to jerk my chin up, to face him squarely, to beat him back with what I was. But I couldn’t make myself do it. He was right. I hesitated, then nodded. “I came from the court of the sidhe. My father sent me to see you. He thought . . .” I studied him, this man, tilted my head and ran my eyes from head to toe. He looked like a warrior. Not a healer. But he stayed still and let me stare, let me judge him, and it made me feel . . . better. Safer. “He thought you could help me.”

“But you don’t,” he said, and there wasn’t a question behind the words. It was just a statement.

I shook my head. “I’ve looked. I’ve been looking a long time.”

He nodded again. “Your court told me something about you. Not much.”

“Then you know,” I said, and right then, with perfect timing again, my breath caught and I coughed.

It wasn’t a little cough that I could contain, like it had been at Saben’s apartment. It was a thing that tightened and twisted and grew inside me, so that the more I coughed, the worse it was, until I thought I might expel something important. Like a lung. It hurt, deep in my chest, but the pain was a distant thing, because I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get any air in, and the panic over that blocked out every other thing in my mind. I clapped a hand over my mouth, trying to stop myself, to get control, but then I had to double over. I reached out with my other hand, blind, searching for the tree I’d been leaning against, for anything I could use to keep myself upright.

A hand cupped my elbow, and an arm wrapped around my waist, steadying me.

“Breathe through your nose.” His voice was so deep, so even, right by my ear. He was holding me up, his hands strong on me, and knowing I wasn’t about to go down let me calm myself enough that I could try to do as he said.

“Breathe,” he repeated. “In. Count.” He started counting, then breathed in with me when I did. I coughed again, but he was patient, waited, and then started counting and breathing with me again. His palm skated over my back, soothing. His touch made me want to shiver, made me want to lean into it, but I couldn’t think about it, do anything about it, while I was coughing.

It took me a few long minutes, but the coughing subsided. It always did. I knew it would. It was just frightening while it happened. I straightened, and he stepped away from me.

I pulled my hand from my mouth and wiped it on my jeans. My fingers left a rust-red streak on the fabric. I covered the spot with my palm.

“What was that?” he asked, waving his hand as if trying to encompass the coughing fit and the spot I was covering.

“My blood.”

His jaw clenched. “I can see that.”

But I hadn’t meant it quite so literally. I meant that the coughing and the illness and the tiny streak of red under my hand were a product of my blood, my DNA. It was a product of who I was. “It’s the fey blood. The glamour, the longevity, the magic, whatever you want to call it. I don’t even really know. My fey half. It eats at my human half.”

He sighed, and I didn’t like how resigned it sounded. “It’s poisoning you.”

I raised my eyebrows and shrugged. “They didn’t tell you much about me, did they?” I was surprised, a bit. My father’s court knew about me, the oddity, the half creature that shouldn’t exist, and they liked to gossip about me amongst themselves. Maybe not so much with outsiders, though.

“No.” He raised a hand and pushed his hair back. It had started to dry, the shorter pieces in front falling into his face. “Just that you were sick.” He ran his gaze over my face, and I knew what he was trying to find. The markers, the things that would tell him what I was. The way my hair was a strange reddish-orange—fey. The lavender gray of my eyes—fey. The too-sharp points of my features, my relatively short stature, my pale freckles—all human. “They didn’t tell me you were half.”

“I’m a secret.” He was still staring at me, and there was something in his eyes that I thought was fear. I might have thought he was afraid of me, if my ego was large enough. But my ego wasn’t, and even though I didn’t know him, it was obvious by the power in his body and the way he held himself that he didn’t have anything to fear from me. And I wondered if maybe the fear had lodged in his face when I’d started coughing. If, even though he’d been so calm, I’d scared him by being so breakable.

“You’re not really supposed to know. You’re not supposed to know that a flawed thing like me was created. That my father made such a huge mistake as to fall in love with a human. No one talks about it. Or they shouldn’t.” I shrugged, very carefully. Just one small lift of my shoulder so I wouldn’t set myself coughing again. I wasn’t a very well-kept secret, but I was a secret nonetheless.

He pulled at the top of his skirt thing, and the fabric spread and unfolded, into an attached jacket he could shrug on—a kimono. He stuffed his hands through the arms and tightened the belt around his waist.

“Is it just your lungs?” He reached behind him while he asked, gathering his hair into a ponytail at the base of his neck. He dug into a pocket and came out with a tie to secure it.

I moved my head in something between a nod and a shake. That was a bigger and smaller question than he knew.

He opened his mouth and turned square to face me, like he was getting ready to coerce me into telling him, but then he paused. “What’s your name?” he asked instead.

I was surprised, because most fey don’t ask and don’t offer. A name can be useful, powerful, and it’s not something to give away lightly. But I’d grown up in the human world, for the most part, and I liked that he wanted to know. “Luca,” I told him.

“Sounds fey.”

I shrugged. “My mother picked it.”

He nodded. “And your mother is . . .?”

“Human,” I finished for him, the word clipped. I wanted to take in a deep breath, steady myself, but I was afraid that would start the coughing all over again. “Was.”

His face softened a little. “I’m sorry.”

I shrugged, brushing it off. “And your name?”

“Kin.”

“Kin,” I repeated. I wrapped my arms around myself. The sun was starting to sink, and it seemed like it was getting colder by the second. “I’d like to sit down. In my car. Where it’s warm.” I probably sounded too abrupt, rude, but the coughing spell had drained me, and I couldn’t make myself be more polite. “So if you could . . .” I shrugged, because I wasn’t sure what I wanted from him.

The thing is, I’d been to dozens of doctors and healers and witch workers and shamans, human and fey. At first it had just been about trying to figure out what was happening. Then, as my sickness had gotten worse, it’d been about searching for a cure. My parents had been desperate when I was a child, and I hadn’t even been that sick yet. After I graduated high school and my mother died, my father sent me away. He couldn’t leave the city and his court. But he’d wanted me to keep searching. And for a long time, I’d wanted to keep searching too. I’d kept thinking that there must be someone out there who’d seen what it was I had, who knew someone like me. Who had an answer. Or even just something that would make me feel better. That would mean I didn’t have to be sick all the time.

It takes a long time for hope to dissolve. Long after I thought I couldn’t feel it anymore, it kept popping up. And every time it did, it made the disappointment that followed worse. I couldn’t quite get rid of the hope, though. Even now, even though Kin was standing in front of me, doing his best not to seem shocked at what I was and what that was doing to me, a little bubble swelled inside me that wanted to believe that maybe he’d be the one. That maybe this time, there would be an answer. So I didn’t know what I wanted from him. If I wanted him to try. Or if I wanted him to stomp out that bubble before it could grow into something that would shatter me.

He pulled in a deep breath. “Come back with me. I can . . . I can see what I can do.”

I should have refused him, stopped him right there. But he didn’t sound sure that he really could do anything, and that made me want to go with him. It made me want to trust him, because at least he was being honest with me. And I remembered how solid he’d been, when he’d held me up and stopped me coughing. I remembered how ethereal and lovely and wild he’d been in the club.

I nodded.