The Glass Man - Lila Gray Book 1

Chapter Eleven

"Where are we going?" I couldn't stand the silence in the car anymore.

"Seven Gates," Liam said.

"Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

He gripped the steering wheel tighter. "It's the gateway to Dun Bray, the city of the Seelie Sidhe and their court."

I leaned forward, squishing his words through my brain again and again, making no sense of them. "English, Liam. I don't understand what you just said."

"I know you've been wondering what we are." His fidgeting grew worse. "We're fae, Sidhe as we're originally known."

"What? Fae, as in faerie?" I laughed, but it faltered. "I've read every fairy tale and legend from old Celtic, to Greek, to Norse, to see if anything fit what Parthalan is, but nothing ever did. And the fae are supposed to be small and winged. You're not small and winged."

"Fae, not faerie. And legends rarely get anything right. Your mother was the queen of the Seelie Court, and now that everyone in the royal family is dead but you..." He sighed. "You're the queen of the Seelie Sidhe."

I ignored the sickness in my stomach. "Are you telling me you're not human?"

"I'm telling you we're not human, Lila. You and me and all of the men you met in the last two days. We're fae."

"I don't understand what that means!" The words flew out in a shriek. "No, it can't be true. You're just messing with me again. I'm not like Parthalan." Even I heard the doubt in my voice. All the evidence was right in front of me.

"Sharing a race doesn't inherently make you evil. He's the most sadistic—God, you know what he's like. He's the king of the Unseelie Court, the place where darkness has its own mind, its own teeth. Before the humans started destroying the planet, we were one people, two halves of the same whole. We're not supposed to exist apart, and to answer your question, I think that's the wrong that needs righting. We serve the spirit of the earth, the Goddess. It's her heartbeat that filled you before you healed me, and it's her will that guides us all who are still loyal."

I wanted to deny it, to insist for the millionth time that I was human. But humans couldn't call upon nature and bond with its power. Humans couldn't look at another person's mind the way an astronomer would stare at a universe full of stars through a telescope. Still, I wasn't fae. A mutant maybe, but not something of legend. "What do humans have to do with this?"

"We were the guardians of the Goddess's creatures, but we disagreed on what to do about the humans. We split centuries ago after a civil war. Half of our people believed that no life should be destroyed. The other half wanted to wipe out the human race. Your mother led half to Dun Bray, a hidden city created for her by the ancestors after the fae war. The queen of the Unseelie led the rest to the Black City. Parthalan killed her six months ago, and you're his end game."

We both tensed when headlights came over the hill in front of us, then huffed out breaths when they passed us by. In the light, fresh tears glistened on Liam's cheeks.

"The queen," I said, "was she your wife?"

He laughed, but it held barely contained sorrow. "My mother."

"Shit." I didn't want to feel sorry for him. I wanted to hate him, to humiliate and hurt him, but the knot in my throat wouldn't listen to reason.

I chewed on my finger while I thought. "But your eyes are more like mine, and the rest of those men—fae, whatever—have eyes similar to Parthalan. If your mother was the queen of the Unseelie, then..."

"After the war, my father followed your mother, and my mother stayed as queen of the Unseelie." He took a harsh breath. "My best guess is that a fae's eyes changed based on the side we chose. Anyone who lives primarily in Dun Bray developed deep blue eyes, and the ones from the black city have the ice blues. You and I are the only exception to that rule, and no, I don't know why. I'm not sure anyone but the goddess herself knows. I believed as my father did, but my mother wouldn't let me follow him. Both Courts consider me a half breed now, but the Unseelie accept me because I'm the former queen's son. To some, that still means something."