‘Yes and no. I didn’t grow up in the Underhill so I… Fae like me aren’t allowed to hold positions there.’ He looks away almost angrily. ‘We aren’t trusted enough.’
‘Jak and Morgan can’t either?’
He shakes his head. ‘No, Jak grew up in the Fold, a tiny realm with a few hundred other fae. He didn’t even know the Underhill existed until he was older. Morgan was born in the Dark Realms to a fae mother and an orc father. He isn’t permitted in the Underhill at all.’
‘And what about you? Where are you from?’ I ask, not sure why I want to know Locke’s story as he’s a great, big cunt of an untrustworthy mage, but I do.
He seems to stumble over his words before he looks down at his plate. ‘It’s believed I was born in the Underhill but I was taken from there to the Light Realm along with many others.’
I tilt my head at him. ‘By who? Why?’
‘A human, a mage from Kitore, the First City. He had all the fae in the Underhill at the time taken in a raid. It was different then. Smaller. There were just females and faelings living there for safety. There were almost no warriors there to protect them. He took them all. Later, he killed the females after stealing their natural magick, and hid the children. The fae were able to find them and get them back, but no one knew for sure how many there had been. The records were destroyed, minds altered by Kitore’s turbulent wards.’
‘But you weren’t returned? What happened to you?’ I can’t help but ask, though I’m sure I’ll kick myself for it later.
My heart needs to remain hard toward him, and the others.
‘Nothing. Maybe I was with the children who were taken. Maybe I wasn’t. I don’t remember. But I was taken in by a human woman. She found me wandering on a road outside the town of Midway, she said. She estimated I was but two years old. I don’t know how I came to be there. She took me to her home, grew my hair long to cover my ears so no one would know I wasn’t human.’
‘What about your eyes?’ I blurt.
‘My eyes?’
‘They’re a purple color sometimes. Other fae as well.’
‘We naturally hide our eyes when we’re young. And we can choose to once we reach maturity.’
‘Oh,’ I say, looking back down at the table where my piece of bread is now naught but crumbs where I’ve absentmindedly demolished it.
The silence stretches between us.
I look up to find him watching me and, suddenly self-conscious, I take another piece of bread from the sliced boule to cover the pile of crumbs I’ve created.
‘So you were able to hide in the Light Realm,’ I prompt when he doesn’t speak.
He lets out a mirthless chuckle. ‘Yes, it wasn’t difficult back then. Faelings look practically human except for our ears when we’re young. It’s not until we’re older that most of us begin to lookotherto the humans. Taller. More angular features. Some like Jak can blend in well, but most of us can be picked out.’
He leans back in his chair with a small sigh, looking up at the ceiling.
‘But, in truth, we rarely saw outsiders at Nanna’s. She lived deep in the forest. She had other children, too, all a bit older than me. Soral, Bandy, and Tash. They became my brothers and my sister. They taught me everything. I cared about all of them as if they were my true family.’
‘Where are they now?’ I ask. ‘Here in the Light?’
‘No, Bryn.’ He closes his eyes. ‘They aren’t in the Light.’
‘When I was about ten or eleven, some men came. I noticed one had ears like mine. I was excited. So naïve. Nanna, Soral, Bandy, Tash and I were by the river. They attacked us without warning, and I was knocked out. When I woke, the others were gone. Taken. They left me when they saw my ears, I suppose. They were there for humans, not fae. I found out later that they must have been slavers from the Dark Realms. They’d found a way into the Light, a way that shouldn’t have been possible after the Breach was closed to the Light, and they’d taken my family.’
I let out a long breath, my pity for Locke strong, but my anger at him still stronger.
‘What happened to them?’ I ask quietly, looking down at my bread, but no longer wanting to eat anything.
‘I don’t know for sure. Sold into the Dark Realms is a certainty. I looked for years, but I never found a trace of them.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I say, and I find that it isn’t a lie.
Even after what he’s done, my heart aches for the fae child who lost his brethrentwice.
He shrugs, not looking at me now.
