I didn’t see Kin or Saben for a week. One afternoon I came home and found, waiting for me on my front steps, another bundle of dried herbs and a glass jar of the tart liquid I’d been drinking every morning with my breakfast. A note in a thick, gently slanted hand instructed me to use the herbs as incense, to inhale the vapors they gave off. There was no signature, but I knew it was Kin. I didn’t know if I’d missed him while I was out, or if he hadn’t wanted to see me again, had left the things while I wasn’t watching. I took the herbs and burned some, letting the smoke rise up from the ceramic plate I’d set them on. It smelled earthy and green and smoky. I rolled some into a cigarette and smoked it. It tasted bitter and spicy and the flavor of it made me feel good. I didn’t know what it was doing to my insides, didn’t think it did anything to loosen the tightness in my lungs or ease the ache in my joints, but I liked the flavor. I liked the way it made me feel warm all the way through.

I was disappointed, I realized. He’d told me he would come back. But I’d been expecting that I would see him when he did. I’d known I liked him well enough, but I didn’t think it was until right then, when all that disappointment landed square on my chest, that I realized how much, how good it had felt to just be around him.

I found myself waiting for him, pacing around the house. I kept peeking out the front window, hoping that he’d show up again. It bothered me, that I let myself want that. Want him. I couldn’t seem to stop, though. He’d been so . . . honest. So upfront, even when it was obvious that what he had to tell me hurt him, frightened him. I craved that honesty.

I decided I needed to get out of the house. The fey were still throwing their parties in the apple orchard. They’d be partying there until spring, when they’d move to the beach. The orchard was perfect now, though: seasonal and festive. The fey were into that kind of thing. It wasn’t that I really wanted to be there, any more than I’d wanted to be there the night the girl had told me Saben needed to see me. But I didn’t know where else to go, where else I could get lost, dissolve, disappear. Just for a little while. So I went.

No one says hello at a fey party. There’s no small talk. There’s only dancing or kissing or strange conversations that go in circles and mean nothing. This night, I walked toward the bonfire, but stopped before I got to the loose crush of people around it. Most of them were dancing, their movements wild, fluid, bodies brushing together, limbs tangling, heads thrown back, the sleek lines of throats drenched in orange from the fire. It was loud, with the music behind me and the fire crackling in front of me. Fey laughed, but I could only see their mouths move, couldn’t hear the sound of it.

Someone bumped into me, and I had the brief urge to lean into the contact, the desire to twist myself into those knots of people, but I didn’t step forward to join the dance. I looked at the dancers, at their birch-gray, deep-blue, sweet-brown hair colors, at their sharp wrists, at their eyes, too large and too liquid. I was them, and I wasn’t. They took me in, and they rejected me. I was part of them, but we both wanted to deny that part. I realized, even though I’d come, I didn’t want to dance with them at all.

I felt a warmth against my side. Saben was there, her head leaning onto my shoulder. Her face was soft, relaxed, her body loose, and I figured she’d had something to drink.

“Are you angry with us?”

I wasn’t sure if she was perfecting her royal we, or if she meant the fey in general. It didn’t matter. The answer was the same either way.

“Sometimes.”

Her skin against me wasn’t a gesture of closeness. It was something possessive. I hated myself for pretending it meant the same thing it had when she was small.

“I’m still yours.” I belonged to her, and I belonged to the fey. It wasn’t about blood. It was about where I’d grown up, who I’d spent my life with, who had loved me and hated me and shaped me. No matter how far I’d run or who I’d tried to call home, no matter who I’d pretended to be, I had still always belonged to the fey.

She drew in a breath. I was afraid that she’d try to continue the last conversation we’d been having. That she’d ask me if I’d really come home to die.

“Did you ever figure out your kettle?” I asked, cutting her off before she could say anything.

She snapped her head up, and there it was. A little petulant pout that told me she had a heart, that she was alive and got angry and embarrassed like humans did. She smoothed her face quickly, but I had seen it. That slight pursing of the lips, the frown that had crossed her face for that second. That reminder, that tiny hint at something more inside her, made my night.

“The stove is full of iron. I’ll have it taken out.”

“Saben.”

“Rhian tells me I can get a fire pot and cook on that.”

“You can’t cook.”

“I can make tea,” she said, running right over me. “I need you to come place the clay base.”

“Saben. You can’t start a fire in an apartment. Why are you even staying there? It’s ridiculous.”

Her bottom lip puffed out, just a fraction. “I like it there.”

“You do not.” I sighed. “There’s so much iron.”

“Most of it’s gone now. Or covered.”

What was the point? No stove, no toaster. She couldn’t use the big steel basin sink in the kitchen. She had to cover the taps with silk so she could turn on the water in the bathroom. She put on gloves when she went down the outside stairs, in case she had to reach out and touch the iron railing.

“Just go back and live with Father.”

“I will not.”

“Saben . . .”

She held up her hand. She had a little lace mitt on that made her long fingers seem miles longer and more delicate. “I’m sorry about the beach,” she said, and I was so stunned that she was apologizing that I couldn’t remember what I’d been about to say. Before I could think of it, she startled me again, jumping to a different subject in that fey way of hers. “I had you followed to the park. I wanted to make sure you actually saw the healer.”

I jerked back. I wasn’t sure why that surprised me, really. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe it just hurt.

She drew in a deep breath. “Do you like him?”

“Kin?”

She nodded. She was peering up at me, the fire reflecting in her dark eyes, turning her hair gold and bronze. She was beautiful, more beautiful than even a sidhe had any right to be. She had men and women trailing after her, ready to do whatever she asked. I knew she did. I knew she could snap her fingers and everything she needed would be brought to rest at her feet. But her cheeks were flushed, and her hands were knotting themselves together, her fingers tugging at the gloves. And I remembered times when she’d stared up at me like this before. When she’d been young and uncertain and she’d turned to me to tell her what to do, how to act.

I could almost see us, the two of us, like we were back then, a pair, molded around each other, instead of these two planets, carefully orbiting each other, like we’d become now.

“I like him,” I told her.

“And you would want to see him again.”

I nodded. “I would.”

She took a breath. “Guinne says she knows the club he goes to. She says she thinks he’ll be there tonight.”

I pictured Kin, eyes closed, body twisting, covered in colored light. “Is it the club—” I started to ask, but Saben waved her hand, cutting me off.

“I have no idea of the name of the place. But I would hurry.”

I stepped away from her, then turned back to her once more, my jaw opening to speak.

She shook her head. “I will not leave the apartment.”

I stopped to ask Guinne about the club, but getting any information from her was an impossible task. When I found myself wanting to shake her, I backed away instead. I left the orchard and got in my car and drove to the club where I’d first seen Kin. By the time I got there, it was past midnight. I felt stupid. Even if it was the right place, there was only a small chance Kin would be there tonight, anyway. The fey often got dates and times wrong. Only when it was important to them did they seem to seriously consider time, and even then it was kind of a gamble. Guinne might have heard that Kin was at the club a week ago, and moved it to tonight in her mind. Saben had sounded so resolute, though. She had sounded like the child who had argued with me about whether she could have any more honey candy, laying out her logic in a way that was so un-fey I knew she’d learned it from me, but perfected it on her own. And I was there, parked on a side street just outside the club, so I suppose some part of me believed her.

I took the stairs down to the dance floor, like I had last time, and like last time, I stopped halfway and looked out over the people. The place was packed, so full it was hard to see where one body ended and another began. I sighed, letting go of the part of me that had hoped. Even if Kin was there, I would never be able to pick him out of that mess.

I liked the sharp, pulsing sound of the music, though. I liked the repetition of the beat and the unpredictability of the melody that ran over it. I liked the glow of focused light on hot, smooth metal, reflecting off tables and bars and the pipes that lined the ceiling and the walls. The electricity and the current and the feel of something modern and smooth attracted me in a way the rough, wild feel of the apple orchard hadn’t been able to tonight. I took another step down the stairs.

Kin was in front of me. He glanced up at me, one hand ahead of him on the railing, like he was pulling himself up. His hair was loose, totally loose, hanging over his shoulders. It looked so good like that, so black and shiny, like I could dip my fingers into it and it would feel like silk. Deep-green scales that faded to blue splashed over his cheekbones and up along his right eye. They covered his collarbones and dipped into the neck of his tight tank top. If I hadn’t know better, I would have said they were some kind of beautiful makeup, decoration for a night out. I knew better.

“I found you.”

His face softened into a wry smile. “Were you hoping to?” The lights sparked off his skin and his earrings.

I touched my chest, my plain black T-shirt. I had only gray jeans and black boots and no jewelry, no eyeliner, no color but my muddy orange hair. I was underdressed and I felt it, then, standing there in front of him. “I was.”

“Come dance.”

I hesitated, unsure now that I realized how out of place I was there.

He lifted his hand to me. “Come on.”

“Why didn’t you come see me?” I bit my lip. I didn’t like sounding needy, but I wanted to know.

He let his hand drop. He frowned, the expression small and tight, but he didn’t let his eyes move from mine. “I was nervous.”

“Why?” I noticed that there was a scrap of something sheer attached to his wrist, running down his arm. It caught the lights and shimmered when he moved his hand. A fin. It was a small fin. I could see the fine bones that lined it, like the bones in a bat wing.

He shrugged, a casual gesture, but it was almost uncomfortable, embarrassed. “I didn’t know if you wanted to see me again. I don’t tell you anything good.”

“I do. Want to see you.” Awkward, everything about this moment, everything I was saying. But it didn’t seem to matter. It seemed, instead, like he was as nervous, as unsure, as I was. Afraid that I would tell him there wasn’t anything between us. It made me want to say true things, instead of flirting or playing around like I might have with anyone else. It made me want to reach for him, show him I meant it when I said I wanted him near me.

He held my eyes for another second, and I saw that his were green, deep in color, shimmery, like diving underwater and looking up, past the surface, to see the trees above. He offered his hand to me again.

I took it. His fingers wrapped around mine. It was another reminder that he was fey—he was thin but strong like a willow branch, and his fingers could circle my palm, they were that long. He pulled me deeper into the club. People moved out of his way. They didn’t even seem to notice him slipping past, but they stepped aside, and I followed. We reached a spot in the middle, and he turned to me. Our bodies were pressed close by the people around us. The music made me sway. Kin raised his hands over his head, wrists straight, fingers loose. Scales, moss green and chocolate, curved around his arms like bracelets. He tilted his head back and smiled. He was as free as he had been that first time I’d seen him, as glorious and at home, as if he didn’t care what anyone thought of him in that moment, or maybe didn’t even realize that anyone was watching. Anyone but me.

His body twisted as he danced. One hand came down and rested on my hip. His touch was almost hesitant, his fingers on me light. I moved in to him, pressing against the heat of his palm, and his grip tightened, holding me to him. I was dancing with him. I couldn’t stop. He was so comfortable, and I wanted to be in that space with him. He opened his eyes and smiled wide, and it was directed at me this time, not at the place and the atmosphere. All for me. His fingers tucked themselves into my belt loop.

“You’re not like my sister.” He wasn’t like anyone. He didn’t behave like the fey I knew. He didn’t act like them or speak in circles like them or pretend to be genuine when he was really telling a crooked lie that could be interpreted as the truth.

Kin just shook his head. I didn’t know how he’d heard me over the music and the laughter and shouts around us, but I knew he had. He pulled me closer, which seemed impossible. We danced together, and we danced with the people around us. I could feel his body all along mine, the flat planes of his stomach, the points of his hips, the bump of his knee against my leg. He stared down at me, his body still moving effortlessly to the music. He didn’t look at me like I was all he could see. It would have been impossible, wrong in a way, to deny everything, everyone, else around us. But he looked at me like I was important. Like maybe in that second, I mattered the most.

I leaned forward and he kissed me. His arms came up and dropped around my neck and his skin was hot, the inside of his wrists pressing against me. I reached up and held my hands to his, held his wrists against my neck, feeling the hard pebbles of his bones, the tiny scales slipping under the pads of my fingers. He pulled me closer, and I went to my toes, making the little difference in our heights disappear. And then I knew there were other people around us, I knew we were in the middle of the club, that we were awkward and unsure, but it didn’t matter. None of it did. My mind only thought about him, and him, and him.