Desert Tales: A Wicked Lovely Companion Novel

PROLOGUE

As she took—and failed—the test to become the missing Summer Queen, Rika’s mortality ended. She stared at him from snow-filled eyes, icicles tipping her fingernails, frost clouds rising from her lips. She’d thought she loved him; worse, she’d believed he loved her. As the cold filled her, Keenan didn’t touch her. He simply turned away.

The next time they spoke, he told her that he’d found the girl who might be queen, another mortal who had no idea what he was, the one who could be what she wasn’t. It wasn’t difficult at all to tell girls that Keenan wasn’t to be trusted, and it wasn’t as hard as she’d expected to convince that girl not to take the test.

Again and again, she met the girls who were not the one. Again and again, she tried to convince them not to trust him—and she succeeded.

Years passed, and all Rika had for comfort was the wolf who first came to her when she was filled with ice. No faery offered her friendship, not even those she’d spared from the fate she endured. The loneliness weighed her down almost as much as the ice that crackled across her skin, yet time and again, she stood in front of another mortal girl who refused to lift the staff. Each time, Rika was torn between the sharp satisfaction of seeing Keenan falter and desperate sorrow that her own tenure carrying the ice would continue.

Until Donia . . .

Despite all of Rika’s warnings, Donia decided that Keenan was worth the risk. The color drained from her as her mortality was replaced, as she failed the test. For the first time in years, the tears that slid down Rika’s face were not frozen. Water slipped over her skin instead of ice while Donia’s pale blond hair became white, her body bowed under the pain, and her lips turned blue from the cold.

Rika’s freedom was gained only by another’s loss.

Donia fell heavily to the ground, and Rika couldn’t even touch her to help her to stand. Sasha, the wolf, went to the new Winter Girl. He was hers now, like the pain and the ice. Rika felt a burst of guilt as she wished she could keep the wolf, that someone would choose to stay with her.

Rika glared at Keenan as he stood there glowing and then turned away from Donia as he had once turned from her. He had destroyed both of their lives, yet he offered comfort to neither girl. One of the faeries who advised him came to Rika, explaining her new future, treating her with all the barely hidden disdain she’d come to expect of them after she’d convinced girl after girl not to trust the Summer King.

She was no longer ice-filled, but she couldn’t go back to the life she’d left behind. Everyone she’d known was dead. Rika was a faery with no family, no friends, no court; she was untethered, just as alone as she had been for the past decades. Now, however, she no longer even had a purpose.

So she’d fled to somewhere hot, hoping to burn away the memories of the ice that had lived inside her skin. When she arrived, faeries so different than any she knew in the Summer Court or Winter Court watched her, but she’d turned away from them, pretended that they were no different than the landscape around them, and they’d let her—at least, she’d thought they did.

They never acknowledged her until one night when she watched the Alpha, Sionnach, dance in the wide-open desert under a full moon. It wasn’t the first or even the fifth time she’d watched him, but this time, he looked at her and grinned. Late that night, he came to her cave and was the first to talk to her. For years, he was the only one who visited her, who teased her. He didn’t force her to join the faeries here, but he was her friend—her only friend.

Until Jayce . . .