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My skin crackles. “You’re not welcome.”

And well, he’s not. I don’t like him tossing out such an endearment, yet my stomach reacts differently than my brain. A fizzy sensation bubbles like effervescence in my womb. It’s a part of me I don’t know what to do with.

I resent him for that. And what have I done, freeing a Fae? If he’d been one of the captured fauna, I would have liberated him without repentance. But this creature? I’ve just betrayed my neighbors, knowing all the things Faeries have done to them. All the bad and frightening things.

Faeries deserve retribution, the villagers say. Faeries have no hearts or consciences. Faeries are abominations, bred from the wrong side of nature. The dark side.

I should go. I should get back to my sisters.

I shouldn’t have helped him. I’ll regret this.

“What’s your name?” an earthen voice asks, boyish and quizzical.

The question is a finger poking me in the side, demanding my attention. “It’s not ‘luv’” is all I say.

“That’s a shame.” The Fae eases out his leg, then reclines further onto the bed of grass while bracing himself on his elbows. “My name’s Puck.” His smile goes lopsided. “It rhymes with—”

I cough, half out of shock, half just to stop him. “I know what it rhymes with.”

That smile widens, carving through the residual pain. “And what does your name rhyme with?”

“Nothing.”

“Every name rhymes with something.” He grits his teeth at the slightest movement of his injured limb. “If not, just make up a word that sounds similar. Problem solved.”

How lazy. “I will notmake upa word.”

“Aww. Need help?”

“And I will not tell you my name.”

Not because it’s dangerous. The lore was disproved ages ago: There’s no harm in humans revealing their names to Faeries. I just won’t tell him because I don’t want to give this creature that piece of me, nor any piece of me.

But there is harm in Faeries revealing their monikers to humans. “Puck” must be his nickname rather than his true one. Be that as it may, it suits him.

His tongue is as honed as his ears, his attitude as bold as the shade of his hair. I’ve never seen a red quite so, well, red. It’s an inferno, painted in every blazing hue. It’s a volatile color. A naughty one, too.

The satyr doesn’t nag me about my name, but only because his attention has strayed to my human legs. They peek from the cloak and frayed nightgown hem, the calves as slender as stems, the bulbs of my toes flushed peach.

At first, I think he’s appraising me, so I scoot away from him. But then his head pivots from my limbs to his furred calves, his brows crinkling like dual accordions. Surely, he knows mortals don’t possess fauna traits.

Doesn’t he? Plenty of mortals have disappeared into Faerie. And he must have noted the ones who’d captured him.

Yet confusion distorts his countenance. “What’s it like?”

“What is what like?” I reply.

“Those.” He juts his chin to my legs. “What’s it like to have those?”

“Couldn’t you ask any Fae with toes and ankles?”

Puck’s stare uproots me. “But I’m asking you.”

I blink. What kind of question is that? What answer does he want?

I consider the wreckage of his leg, the shredded skin beneath that bandage. It’s a miracle the trap didn’t chomp the limb in half. It’s a greater miracle that such a flimsy textile staunched the flow.

It would have done worse to a real deer.