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“There is much I must atone for.” He cocked his head, regarding her for a moment, then seated himself beside her, his wings furling behind him.

He took her hand. “I am a selfish brat. So Ofelia has said, and she is far wiser than I. But I do not regret returning to see you, nor what I have done to stay by your side.” He leaned closer.

“I will not regret it, even if you cast me aside this night.”

Poppy eyed his penitent face. “What exactly have you done?”

He heaved a sigh. “I have consumed much of your water. I fear that it may be as much as a…golf course? Is that the creature you said would make your bill more costly?”

“It’s not a creature.” Poppy shifted toward Rai. “And I don’t care about the bill.” That wasn’t strictly true, but close enough.

“And I have lied to you, again and again.” He brought his other hand to cover hers. “Truly I have not even counted all the lies. I have pretended to work, pretended to be human.”

Poppy tightened her fingers on his involuntarily. “Did you pretend to…to like me?”

He blinked. “What would be the point of such a pretense? The thought of you has consumed me. That is why I returned, why I have remained in such a place as this.”

She raised her eyebrows, oddly stung. “‘Such a place as this’? What’s wrong with Tucson?” She mentally shoved under the bed all the times she had grumbled about her new home .

“I am of water,” he said with a note of tragedy.

Poppy’s eyebrows went higher. “And?”

“I do not wish to hide in a cactus.” His voice dripped with horror.

She gaped at him. “A…cactus?”

He nodded vigorously. “So I have heard water fae must do to survive in the desert. Ofelia laughed at me when I spoke of it, but she also did not disagree, and has said that I must not remain past the monsoon. As it is, I find the days without rain…” He shuddered, the motion rippling all the way out to his wingtips, which crackled with dismay.

And Poppy was not going to think too hard about the fact that she had already gone from holy fuck, wings!

to reading emotions from their vibrations, that she had already acclimated to thinking of them as part of Rai, that she had made it past the strangeness to actually accepting the purple-or-lilac winged stranger before her as the man she…

“Who is Ofelia? You said…not your wife.” Best to get everything out now.

Rai’s eyes lit up. “She is a friend! I met her when I was seeking assistance in humaning, and she has been most kind, when she is not scolding me.” He smiled wryly.

“Though she does scold me quite a lot. When I say I am trying, she agrees that I am indeed very trying. She will have much to say about this evening.”

That sounded more like an older sister—or even a mother—than a lover. “She’s another, um, fae?”

“Yes, though she is of earth and fire. I will take you to meet her, if you wish. She will be pleased I have told you the truth.”

“I—” Poppy laughed, feeling a little hysterical. “Maybe tomorrow. Or next week. Like I said, processing. I’m still working on the wings.” She closed her eyes for a moment, bracing herself. “I’ve been trying not to look at them.”

“I can hide them again,” he murmured.

“No,” she said, resolutely opening her eyes again. “I think I need to… They’re a part of you. And I need… I want to know the real you. All of you. So…”

Rai’s hand pressed hers for a moment, his eyes warm with comprehension, and without another word he stood and turned his back to her, spreading his wings wide.

She rose and cautiously approached, eyes tracing the whorls and branches and membranes. The wings crackled and pulsed with energy, looking less like a dragonfly’s the more she studied them. “May… Can I touch them? Or will they electrocute me?”

“I…do not know,” he said. He tensed, the muscles of his back bunching as if bracing for a blow. “You are the only human who has ever seen them. ”

The vulnerability in his voice made warmth bloom in her chest, calmed her frazzled nerves.

Gave her an unexpected courage. She reached toward one of the crackles before she could overthink it.

The electricity stretched out to meet her, curling warmly around her fingertip.

It tingled, but not painfully. She gasped.

Rai jerked away, wide eyes staring over his shoulder. “I have hurt you!”

“It didn’t hurt,” Poppy hastened to say, then closed the distance between them again, her eyes locked on his.

She ghosted her hands over the top edges of his wings.

The charge set the hairs on her arms sticking straight up, and then she dared to set her fingers right to the surface, and all at once tingles swept through her skin and up her arms.

Rai’s head rocked back in a sigh, his eyes drifting shut.

She gently stroked her fingers out along the smooth, hard leading edge. “They look so delicate,” she whispered, awe washing over her.

“You cannot harm them by touching,” Rai replied, his own voice trembling. “They are very strong.” He had turned his face away, so all she could see was the sweep of his cheekbones, the set of his jaw.

“Like you?” Poppy stepped closer, leaning in to investigate the way the wings sprouted from his shoulder blades.

She ran her palms along the wings’ surface, the nearly transparent webbing smooth as silk.

Rai arched his back as she stroked. “What do they feel like to you? No, wait, that’s a stupid question.

They probably feel just like your arms and legs. ”

“They are part of me.” He flexed them, pressing into her touch. “But they feel very… I do not know the word. But it is an…an intimacy, to share one’s wings, to bare one’s back fully to another.” He shrugged and his wings shrugged with him, sliding deliciously beneath her fingers.

Poppy gazed at his shoulders, his purple shoulders, his hair waving over the nape of his neck, her own hands caressing his wings, and she felt something shift inside her. A decision, maybe, or just the last puzzle piece sinking inevitably into place.

She took another step toward him, bent, and brushed her lips at the center of his back, the beaded dip of his spine just between his shoulder blades.

Rai made a sound between a laugh and a sob.

“I get it,” Poppy said, pressing her body against his, sliding her hands down and around his sides until her palms were flat against his trembling chest, her breast against his trembling wings. “I get why you didn’t tell me.”

He leaned back into her embrace. “I merely wished to stay with you as long as I might. Until the rains end, and I must leave. ”

She held him tighter, a giggle escaping her. “Or hide in a cactus. Or… What happens if you don’t leave? Because I don’t think you’ll fit in a saguaro. Not with these pecs.”

His chest heaved once, twice, a third time before he spoke. “If I do not leave in time,” he said in a quiet voice, “then I will die.”

Poppy jerked away reflexively. “ What? ”

He turned, his wings flaring up and over her head like choreography until they were behind him and he could lunge forward to take her hands again.

He was smiling, bright as the sun even under the moonlight.

“It is of no matter. I will be certain to leave when the time comes, just as I have promised you.”

“It is absolutely fucking of matter,” she retorted. “If you’re going to die, then—”

“But I will not. I swear it. I may be a fool, but I am a selfish one, and I would find no amusement in dying.” He bent and pressed a kiss to the back of each of her hands in turn. “And now that you know of my lies and have forgiven me, there is no need to spend a moment apart.”

“Wait. I haven’t—” Except she had forgiven him. She could feel it in her gut, in her chest. She hadn’t put it into those exact words, but she had been kind of obvious, with the kissing and the hugging. “As long as you’ve told me the truth. All of the truth.”

Rai straightened, his face conflicted. “I have not told you all that there is of the fae, of my life.”

“That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about the big things, the lies and the secrets.

” She squeezed his hands. “I don’t mind having lots to learn about you.

And I’m sure when I can think again I’m going to have lots of questions about all the things we skipped over.

But no more lies. No more secrets that affect me—us. Can we agree on that?”

A shadow crossed Rai’s face, gone almost before she saw it, and then he smiled. Wide and guileless and gleaming, his one slightly crooked canine as charming as ever. “No more secrets,” he agreed.

“Okay then.” Poppy glanced around once more, taking in the brightness of the city, the dark surrounding it, the storm that Rai had made an eye for them in. “So do you think we can get down off this mountain? It’s only going to get colder.”

He nodded and strode over to pick up the discarded umbrella.

“You don’t need that, do you?” Poppy said with an embarrassed laugh.

He scoffed faintly. “Of course I need it. It is a gift from you.” His eyes widened. “Ah, but I must tell you what Ofelia said about condoms! It is very good news. ”

“Save it for later.” Poppy rolled her eyes. “Home now.” Though now that she’d wrapped her brain around the existence of Rai’s wings, touched them, felt him quiver as she petted them, she had to admit her own imagination was drifting in a condom-friendly direction.

She had all sorts of ideas.

Rai held the umbrella out to her with a courtly bow.

She took it and burst into giggles as he scooped her into his arms yet again.

He kissed her through the giggles, soundly enough to take her breath away.

“Ofelia is right,” she gasped as he leapt into the air.

“You are very, very trying.” She wrapped her arms tightly around his neck.

He grinned wickedly. “But also an adventure.” His smile was bright and fierce as the lightning around them.

Poppy’s nod turned into a squeal as Rai dove into the rain, flying swiftly in the direction of her house.

And as she watched “A” Mountain diminish behind them, the rocky white letter fading to darkness as the gap in the clouds closed and shut the moon away, she tried not to think about what he’d said about dying.

Or how Rai’s smile had been just as wide and bright and sparkling the night they’d met, when he’d been lying through his teeth.