Page 87

P oppy glared at the weather app on her phone, then aimed her glare at the clear sky above.

Seventy-five percent chance of rain, my happy ass , she grumbled, tucking her phone back in her purse and stepping back inside Galeria de las Lluvias. Tonight was her big night, and she’d wanted it to be more than big, wanted it to be glorious, but the weather was not cooperating.

She was going to have to settle for the evening being merely successful.

Which, given that even having a reception for a show displaying her own paintings had been an unthinkable fantasy just a year ago, was probably enough.

This is what happens when you get everything you ever wanted, she chided herself. You keep wanting more.

Except that wasn’t precisely true. She was, in fact, disgustingly, blissfully content with her life.

The more she’d wanted was such a ridiculously tiny more that she didn’t even feel guilty for wanting it.

Which, she reassured herself, meant that she’d grown as a person over the past year.

She’d stopped feeling shame for having needs.

Stopped taking the weight of the world and Jupiter besides on her own shoulders.

Stopped pretending that never accepting help was a virtue.

Stopped trying to be anything other than who she was .

It all came with learning to fly, and stretching her own wings. And so here she was.

Just to take it in, to bask for a moment, she stopped inside the door and slowly turned to regard the room.

The gallery was spacious yet intimate, its white walls and track lighting designed to showcase the art.

There was the collection of small alla prima paintings that had earned her this gallery gig, artfully arranged above the trays of cheese and chocolates.

A couple of them were already marked sold , which made her giddy.

The larger paintings she’d done on their travels ringed the walls—vivid Chicago snowscapes where the snow reflected a thousand colors of light, hazy paintings of the Washington coast in fog, an energetic rendering of a lightning storm over Lake Pontchartrain.

Vibrant studies of birds and fish and other wildlife.

Here and there a life-sized portrait interrupted the paintings of the natural world, each of them someone dear to her.

Her mother, peacefully sipping tea on her porch, surrounded by her plants; her father, rendered from a stack of photographs and her own memory, painting out in the wilderness; Ofelia, elegant and enigmatic among wind-eroded rocks, her flared wings reflecting the colors of the desert at sunset.

Rai’s mother and father shared a portrait, captured in a moment of relaxation on the beach near Navy Pier, Rai’s mother stroking her husband’s magnificent beard, their wings delicately entwined amid the lake’s morning mists.

Poppy had even convinced Heather to pose for a portrait, her blue hair vibrant against the red bricks of Café Legend, the playful ants of the mural seeming to frolic about her.

The painting had been a gift, of course—like most of the portraits—given in gratitude for Heather’s support of her art and the way she had watered Rai without question, even not knowing it was saving his life.

“I always knew you were good,” Heather had said when Poppy had shown her the final portrait. “You just needed some time to bloom.”

“You gave that to me,” Poppy had replied, giving Heather a hug. “You gave me a chance.”

“I can’t take all the credit,” Heather had laughed. “Though mind you, I am totally taking all the credit every chance I get.”

She was somewhere in the languid crowd of people now, her mermaid-haired girlfriend by her side.

Poppy had her suspicions of that one, but she wasn’t into outing fae-in-disguise.

She did drop a subtle hint that maybe the wings should come out sooner rather than later.

Just in case—it wasn’t like she knew for sure.

Modern hair dye was capable of amazing things .

With a satisfied sigh, Poppy finally turned her gaze to the centerpiece of the show, mentally lifting a glass to it—she’d have to get another glass of the fine merlot the gallery owner had provided to lift a glass in truth.

Rai gazed down at her from the wall, his eyes full of clouds and his wings flaring with lightning and his beautiful, sinful body lounging like he was a harem of one, begging the honor of providing his mistress pleasure.

Every inch of him decadent and sinful and fey, and love in every curve of his body.

Exactly as he was in real life.

Some reviews of her show had already come out, and not all had been kind.

At least one reviewer had sneered at her “soft-porn fantasy fanart” and another had mourned the way her art-school training had been polluted by “modern kitsch.” And the last time she’d been to the art supply store, the kindly older lady at the register had managed to be both congratulatory and wistfully dismissive when she backhandedly complimented Poppy’s “subversion” of classical ideals.

Poppy had cut out the negative reviews, highlighted the more amusing passages, and pasted them into a scrapbook.

She’d laughed at what those reviewers would think if they’d known that all of her portraits had been done from life and were, despite her lively brushwork, accurate renderings of the actual subjects who had posed for her.

Rai had raged and offered to rain cloudbursts and lightning upon the offending reviewers’ heads.

She had declined, of course, but accompanied by so many kisses and caresses that Rai had only sulked a little.

And even that, she suspected, had been to make her horny.

With apologies to Mark Twain, she’d coined a new phrase.

Lies, damn lies, and Rai’s sulky pouty face.

It had worked. Holy fuck had it worked. Rai really knew how to use his pouty lips, that’s all she was saying.

Also, she was fairly certain he had rained a little extra precipitational vengeance upon the reviewer who had dared to mock the portrait of his parents.

She had not asked, and he had not told, but she knew his smug looks by now.

And she’d secretly approved. She’d been incredibly pleased with that one, even if paint was unworthy to capture the magnificence of his father’s beard. It was absolutely epic in real life.

“Will you have a beard like that someday?” she’d asked, stroking Rai’s smooth cheeks.

He’d shrugged. “Perhaps when I am five hundred. Will you paint me then?”

She’d hesitated. Ofelia had given her some cryptic advice that had hinted that humans might, through constant interaction, absorb fae magic to match fae lifespans, but she had still been uncertain. It seemed unpossible .

“That is not a word,” Rai had said when she’d voiced her concerns.

“I made it up. But me living five hundred years seems made up, too.”

“But it is not,” he’d said with conviction.

And so eventually, she had promised to paint Rai’s five-hundred-year beard.

If she did not live that long, she’d reasoned, then it wasn’t her fault she couldn’t keep her promise.

And if she did, she was going to paint Rai’s beard at every possible stage of its evolution.

Maybe use whatever technology existed five hundred years from now to render the sexiest time-lapse animation ever.

She’d never been into beards, but she was pretty sure Rai was going to make her a believer.

“You are a great success,” came a mellow voice from beside her, and she turned with a slight bow of the head to acknowledge Rai’s mother, who had somehow flowed into the space beside her without her noticing.

“I guess so,” Poppy replied, nervousness clogging her throat. Though they had spent a month visiting Rai’s family, she still was not quite sure what to make of them.

Rai was adored by his mother. It was plain in the way her eyes lit up at the sight of him, the brilliant smile on her face every time they spoke through a pool of water or in person.

If Poppy had not met Rai’s father, whose teeth were literally perfect pearls, she would have thought his mother the source of his dazzling smiles.

She was kind, welcoming, and generous and doted on her son and his chosen mate.

On their first meeting, Poppy had found herself laden down with jewels that she suspected were worth more than her mother’s house.

And yet Rai’s mother was also…vague. It was disconcerting, even with Poppy’s experience with her own mother and her own probable-yet-undiagnosed neurodivergence. She’d asked Rai about it later, and he’d been both helpful and not.

“Fae love their children deeply,” he’d said. “Yet when one has dozens of children over a period of centuries, one sometimes…” He’d trailed off, seeking a word.

“Forgets?” Poppy had suggested.

“It is not so much forgetting,” Rai had equivocated, “as it is distraction. We do not forget we have children, but we may be distracted from their existence by something…shiny. My mother loves me deeply, but when I do not contact her, she is only mildly disconcerted. She does not think to scold me until I have contacted her again.”

Poppy had given Rai a bit of side-eye. “Do you have children?”

Rai had scoffed at the very idea. “I am far too young, and until you, I have not wished for them. Even now, I do not think I am ready, though a child with your eyes would be…” He ’d wandered off in imagination for a moment before returning to her.

“There will be time for us, if we wish it. And if we do not, you have given much to the world with your art. Your legacy is wondrous.”