Shadowborn (32 page)

Nix edged toward Liam. “It’s bad enough to be Unseelie but entirely worse to be a mutt.”

“How dare you!” My father invaded Nix’s space, but I reeled him back with a hand on his arm.

Nix deserved the truth, and if I ended up alone in the end, I’d deal with it like I always did. There was nothing wrong with me. If he truly loved me, he’d accept my heritage. “Can you give us a minute?” I said to Liam and my father.

Donovan guided Liam away but only far enough to give the illusion of space without risking my safety. They must have had the same nagging fear that Nix would react violently to what I was about to tell.

28

An urge to touch Nix took me closer to him. I swiped my thumb across his upper lip, scrubbing off the remaining blood. He sighed and leaned into the touch.

A lick of my tongue swiped moisture onto my dry lips. “A few days ago in my room, I tried to tell you something.”

He pressed his forehead against mine. I half expected Liam to intervene, but he didn’t. “And I told you there’s nothing you could tell me that would change anything. I don’t care what you did before I met you.”

Dryness claimed my mouth and throat, both unaffected by my frantic swallows. “You need to know who my father is.”

Nix leaned back. “You know? But I thought … Arianne kept him secret from us. I thought he was one of the lesser of us, a Seelie not of the Court.”

Frost invaded my flesh and induced a shiver along my spine. I stepped back and steeled myself for his reaction. Unable to say it, I extended my hand toward Donovan. He sped back to me and slipped his fingers into mine.

Silence settled over Seven Gates with a crushing weight. Nix turned back and forth between us. The moment he connected the dots, his face tightened into a mask of fury.

“That isn’t funny,” he said. “How could you even stomach such a vial joke?”

I jerked back at the sharpness of his tone. “Garret was my brother—the boy who died trying to save me. Donovan is my father. Why do you think I fought so hard to save him last year?” I straightened and forced my voice into a steady line. “After being with him for five minutes, I understood why my mother loved him. Your queen whom you loved and respected. You talk about pure, good and righteous? That describes him, and I am proud to call him father.”

“No.” Fingers spreading into his hair, Nix glided left and right as if he didn’t know what to do with himself. “You can’t be … one of them.” He pointed at Liam. “You wanted to know where I went a few weeks ago? Well, I found one of his brethren and made him tell me what happened to my father.” Nix’s nostrils flared like a bull about to launch. “Liam’s fucking mother tortured and raped my father in the Unseelie Court because he had your vision of a united fae kingdom, Lila. He thought he’d get things started for you by asking for an audience with her. That demon whore strung him up and bled him near death. She cut off his … then let him heal before she’d start over again. In the end, she disemboweled him and let him hang there until he rotted. And your precious Liam, and your father, too, probably stood by laughing while they watched.”

“Hell’s fucking balls.” Liam returned, studying Nix’s face. “That fae was your father?”

A sneer was Nix’s only response.

Donovan cursed softly. “Liam tried to intervene, Nix. He spoke out in the Court and paid dearly for it. I’m ashamed to say I held my tongue despite what our queen did to your father and to Liam, to her own son. I’m so sorry.”

“You can shove your sorry up your ass. And you”—he jutted his chin toward Liam—“nothing she could have done to you was worse than what she did to my father. He’s dead.”

The grief in Nix’s voice tore at me. In the background, I wondered what Liam’s mother had done to him. To Nix, I said, “Why didn’t you tell me this?”

“You’re one to talk about keeping secrets,” he said with a sneer. “I couldn’t deal with it at first, and I meant what I said, that I didn’t want to make your life harder.” A frantic laugh rumbled over his lips. “Don’t know why I bothered. You’ll always side with them no matter what I do.”

“We’re all on the same side.” When I reached for him, he jumped back as if I’d jabbed fire at him.

“Don’t you dare touch me. My mother and brothers searched for you for years. They died for you, and you’re nothing but a …” His lip curled in distaste as he averted his eyes from me.

I nodded, half numb, half angry. “Nothing but a filthy half-breed, right? I’m the same woman I was five minutes ago. If you truly loved me, this wouldn’t make a speck of difference.” At his silence, I laughed—a ragged, lunatic sound. “So I was right all along. You were in love with the idea of me. A pure Seelie queen. So what … you had fantasies about shacking up with me so I could squeeze out your babies, and you could be the big man of the castle? That’s why you asked to be my captain, isn’t it?”

The wilt of his shoulders let me know I’d hit the target dead center.

“What happened to your father is unspeakably cruel. The former queen and Parthalan after her were seduced by their darkness, and I hated them for what they did to all of us, but I don’t use that hatred to paint the rest of the Unseelie. I’m sorry I lied to you, but I see now that my fears about your reaction weren’t unfounded.”

Nix turned without looking at me again. “I’m done.”

A surge of emotion welled in my chest. “Well that’s just great, Nix. The day before the Shadowborn are going to suck out my soul and hand it over to the Magi so they can cast some sort of ancient magic to do unknown things to the world, and you walk out on your queen?”

His head turned enough to display the hard lines of his cheekbones and the fierceness in his stare.
“You … are not … my queen.” The words punched through my chest and ripped my heart out, leaving a bleeding wound in my center. Without another word, he disappeared into the cavern.

“Lila,” Donovan said. “If only I’d made the connection to his father sooner, I might have averted this disaster.”

I shook my head, buying some time for the squeeze on my throat to ease up. “I think I always knew it wasn’t me he saw when he looked at me.”

Liam scratched his hair. “We need to talk, but maybe now isn’t the time?”

Hysterical laughter spilled from my lips. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten about my date with Alastair tomorrow?” Digging fingernails into my palms, I started for the cavern. “If tonight’s all I’ve got left of my life, then I’m not going to risk wasting it with you. If I find a way to kill his ass, then I’ll pencil you in.”

Footsteps pounded behind me before a grunt sounded.

“Let her go, Liam,” Donovan said in his fatherly way. “You have a mountain of trust issues to climb, and she has enough to deal with.”

Liam’s, “I love you, Lila,” and “I’m sorry,” chased me into the mouth of the cave.

Unwilling to return to the city alone, I waited until their mental presences left Seven Gates and went back outside. Face turned to the black sky, I screamed and shoved energy into everything around me, splintering trees and crumbling stones to dust. It didn’t matter that I’d tried to hold Nix out of my heart. He’d crawled in there at some point. Having him removed in one painful jerk echoed into my soul. I imagined the ripples would affect me for a long time.

A familiar squeeze crowded my mind. Wings pounded against the air above me, each drum-like sound reverberating through my bones.

“No.” Fingers to temples, I gritted my teeth. “Not now. How did you get out?”

As Parthalan’s terror-filled thoughts connected with mine—fear for me and not himself—he scooped me off the ground and swooped upward.

“Let. Me. Go!” I snarled the words at him, sending my command through our link. My legs flailed as I fell. Maybe I should have thought that through a little more.

He screeched his frustration and snatched me up again right before I hit the ground. “Pleassse, Missstresss,” he hissed through his long, black beak. “Allow me to take you to sssafety.”

I held my body stiff and allowed him to set me in the branch of a tall maple tree.

Once free, I scuttled back until my back bumped into the trunk. “How did you get out of Cargun?”

Head bowed forward, he knelt on the branch. His feathers retreated into his skin as he groaned. My skin itched too, my proximity to him making it difficult to block him from my thoughts. His beak disappeared. A trickle of blood descended from my nose.

Parthalan raised haunted, ice eyes to me and held a pale hand to his bare chest. “Your agony is suffocating. The ability to function did not come without effort. I was desperate to heal you, uncertain what horror had befallen my mistress, so I begged the creature I last saw you in to grant me passage.”

Stunned into silence, I glared at him. “Well, I’m just fucking ducky, so get lost.”

His body sagged. “I’ve displeased you. Forgive me.”

Guilt chewed on me. I smacked a hand to my forehead. Why did I feel bad for being such a bitch?
Because he’s nothing but a child lost in the dark
. Thank you, Mr. Conscience. “Thank you for knocking some sense into me, okay? Now, you need to go before someone sees you. They won’t understand that you’re not … that you aren’t who you used to be.”

“Yes, mistress.” Parthalan stood, his black wings folding back to expose a ragged, blue T-shirt and holey jeans. “I have done as you asked. The Host is at your command. Through me, they sense you. They remember that you saved them from the monster I used to be.”

Coming from an undead birdman, that sounded so odd I almost laughed. I sobered when I realized what he’d said. “So … Rourke is dead, then?”

Parthalan winced and averted his eyes from me. “He is no more. Will you keep to your promise? I cannot … bear to do such a thing to another again. It makes me ill.”

An amber haze from Seven Gates indicated the activation of the Black City portal.

“Go, Parthalan. Now. My people are coming back.”

“May I return you to your realm?” The hope in his eyes gave me the squirms.

A moment of consideration, and I nodded my consent. “Fine, drop me by the left-most cavern.”

He returned to his bird form faster than it had happened in the other direction. As we soared back to the ground, he asked, “What would you have of the Hossst?”

Through our link, I understood that he was asking about the Shadowborn. “I don’t know yet. How can I reach you in a hurry if I need to?”

“I will remain outssside Cargun. The ward does not prevent my bond with the Hossst. They will come at my call.”

“Then be listening. I might not know what I need you for until I face Alastair.” I snorted, half in disappointment at my inability to solve the puzzle and half in sadness. “It may just be to pick up my body and destroy it so he can’t deliver that to the Magi, too.”

“My life is yoursss, missstresss.”

When he dropped me at the doorway, I ran and didn’t stop until I made it to the garden in the center of the city. A carpet of rich, emerald grass cushioned my bare feet. Feathery blossoms on the pink and silver trees swayed back and forth, even though no wind disturbed the land. They danced to music I couldn’t hear. The only sound came from my own internal voice warring inside my head.

Although relieved that Mr. Psycho, Rourke, was finally dead for good, it didn’t stop the rest of my problems from crashing in on me again. A mountain of trust issues, Donovan had said. What a crock of shit
.
My logical side reasoned that Liam did what he did to hold onto the throne and help me unite our people as he’d said, but my emotional side countered with his initial lies and what I perceived as a weakness that he couldn’t stand up to his people without causing a revolution.

Laughing at my own hypocrisy, I lay down on the grass and spread my fingers through the dewy strands. Hadn’t I done exactly that? Forced my will on my people and caused them to hate me?

Nix had left me because of what I carried within. My own captain couldn’t stand the sight of me. The hole at my core opened a little wider.

Was it wrong and entirely selfish of me to be relieved that, though I’d be furious with Liam for a decade or more, he hadn’t taken a queen? Guilt crawled through me with clawed fingers. Instead of slinging insults and jealousy over his decision, I should have helped him find a way to connect with his people so they wouldn’t have challenged him in the first place.

Concentration helped turn my thoughts to my own task. “How do I forgive myself for what happened to you?” I said to the rippling liquid gold above. “With all the power I had, I did nothing to save any of you.”

“The answer will come to you, Lila.” Brígh’s nimble steps along the grass made no sound as she approached and folded down cross-legged beside me. “All you’re missing now is faith.”

“Faith? Pfft. In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m not big on relying on anything, especially things I can’t see or touch.”
Or people who say they love me.

“Things you can’t control, you mean.” She jacked up an eyebrow at me.

Choking on a response I’d have regretted saying, I chuckled instead. “Is everyone back, then?”

“Why are you changing the subject?”

“Are they?”

“Yes, and everyone was buzzing with the good time they had, blah, blah, blah.” She huffed out a sigh. “I’m sorry about Nix. I’d like to say he sees the error in his ways, but I think he’ll need a bit of time for that one. And I know you’re pissed at me, so out with it.”

Until she said it, I hadn’t realized it was true. “You knew Liam wouldn’t go through with it.” I leapt up and propped my palm against the shiny bark of a nearby tree. “That’s why you were so agitated all night. You fucking knew, and you let me suffer through all her pawing and …” A groan finished the statement, followed by a mental hammer to the forehead. “Shit, I’m sorry. You told me about the rules and all that, I’m just …”

“It’s okay. My gag order frustrates the fucking hell out of me, too. Stupid bitches.” Grass flew up from her kick. “Sometimes I’d like to crack them one right in the puckers.”

The pout in her voice, along with my need for a release of tension, summoned a laugh right from the basement of my belly. A moment later, Brígh joined me, and we ended up rolling on the ground in tears.