The Glass Man (17 page)

21

Liam passed a hand under the door and stretched to reach up the sides. If fae glamour hid the construction holding it up, touch should reveal it—or so he’d told me when I’d interrogated him.

I walked a tight circle around the door for the fifth time but found nothing new. A narrow mother-of-pearl inlay decorated the arched top and continued down the perimeter two inches from the edge of the door. The wood had been stained a dark honey color, and an emblem of an eye had been carved into the center of the single raised panel.

Garret sat cross-legged in the grass, elbows on his knees, staring at the oak slab.

“I’m going to touch it,” I said.

“No. I told you, we don’t know what might happen.” Liam came to stand beside me, still nude.

All the while, I fidgeted in the corset and thong, wishing I had pockets. I did my best to keep my gaze glued to his face, but my eyes kept wandering back to his enticing landscape.

“We can’t risk your safety,” Liam continued, “and if Garret or I touch it, it’ll certainly do something unpleasant to us because we’re Unseelie.”

My eyes narrowed as I edged closer to him. “What do you think it’ll do to me?”

“I don’t know. That’s the problem.” He stood in front of the door, his arms straight at his sides, his intense eyes fixed on me.

“So, what do you suggest? Stand here and stare at it?” On one hand, I wanted Dun Bray to fill me with a sense of home and to find others like me after believing I was alone for so long. On the other hand, I wanted to find nothing and prove my mother hadn’t lied to me, that I wasn’t the queen of the Seelie. I didn’t want to be fae, and I certainly wasn’t queen material. I didn’t know what I wanted. Peace might have been enough—to go a day without seeing something horrible, to have the comfort of Liam’s body wrapped around me one more time and the insane pleasure we shared that night. I groaned internally.
Stop it! Not going to happen. Mind on task, Lila. Mind on task.

The longer I thought about what I’d find beyond the door, the more my mind conjured images of corpse-strewn streets and ruined buildings. Somehow, I needed to get Liam away from that door before I convinced myself all of my mother’s people were dead. If I lived to kill Parthalan, I vowed to take some acting classes.

Wincing, I pressed my fingers to my temples.

“What’s wrong?” Liam ran forward, but I turned away from him. When he came around in front of me, I whirled around and rushed for the door. I placed my hands against the smooth finish, just barely touching until I determined it wouldn’t eat me like the last one I’d leaned against. My heart fluttered.

“Goddamn it.” Liam appeared on one side of me, jaw flexed and eyes narrowed. Garret stepped up on my other side but not too close.

“It just feels like a door.” Disappointment tainted my voice.

Liam turned and uttered a curse. When he returned his focus to me, he said, “Fine, you’re right. Push it open then.” The unease tucked behind his dirty look seeped out. I wanted to ask what he thought we’d find on the other side, but I didn’t want him to know the extent of my confusion.

I hesitated for a second before I pushed hard. When it didn’t budge, I hung my head. “I guess I’m not welcome here after all.” I settled my gaze on Liam, afraid to take my hands away as if that would make my rejection final.

Liam reached for me but stopped short and dropped his hand. The deep blue of his eyes drew me in, but I couldn’t take the intensity in them. To stare at them too long would weaken my resolve on the distance I needed to keep. I averted my eyes back to the door.

“We’ll figure it out, the three of us,” he said. “Don’t give up on me now.”

Maybe my rejection from Dun Bray was a sign.

I screamed as pain tore through both of my hands. Liam grabbed my wrists and yanked me away from the door. Wooden spikes had sprung out from the surface in the exact place where my palms and fingers had been. My blood ran down the surface like ruby tears before disappearing into the wood.

None of us said anything, only gaped as the door groaned and swung open.

I tugged against Liam’s grip when pleasure spiraled up my bones.

He tightened his hold, sapphire eyes boring into me.

“I’m fine!”

With a groan, he released me. “I won’t touch you, but hold them up so I can look.”

“Why did it do that?” Garret kept his gaze fixed to the open door.

“It was tasting her blood.” Liam traced each of the puncture wounds on my hands. “The Seelie probably sealed it, and only the true queen can open it … with a small sacrifice.” He glanced at Garret. “I need your shorts.”

“What? I’m not giving you my shorts.” On any other day, the mouth hanging open, eyes stretched in horror as if he’d been asked to dance naked in front of a bunch of teenage girls might have made me laugh.

“I’m fine,” I said. “And besides, I don’t want his dirty shorts wrapped around my hands.”

“I told you, we don’t get infections the way humans do. You’ll heal faster if we can stop the blood flow with some steady pressure.” Liam strode over to my brother and reached for his boxers.

Garret backed away with his hands out. “Look, you might be fine walking around with your stuff swinging in the breeze, but I’m not. She isn’t bleeding that badly. Right, Lila?” He nodded his head at me, urging me to agree.

I intertwined my fingers and pressed my palms together. I kept the wince inside. “There, the pressure will stop the bleeding. It’s already starting to heal. I can feel it. So can we go now, Nurse Liam?” My hands hurt, but it wouldn’t kill me.

Liam pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes. Maybe talking himself out of another lecture. When he looked up, he shook his head. “I don’t get the whole nudity issue, especially you, Garret. You grew up with the Unseelie. Quite frankly, I’m ashamed you can’t deal with it for ten minutes to help your sister.”

“Hey, leave him alone.” I paused, considering what he’d said. “Are you telling me the Unseelie go around in the buff often?”

He shrugged. His lips pulled up in a mischievous smile. “You could say that. Why wear clothes if you don’t have to?”

I chuckled as I walked toward the door. “Great. I’m metaphysically joined to a fucking nudist.” In my head, I added,
‘that I can’t stop looking at like a lollipop prime for the licking pleasure.’
I needed to get away from him so I could think without having to plaster a triple-X warning across my forehead.

“So … are we going in, or not?” Liam asked.

I turned to him. “Y—yeah.”
This is the last place mother was truly happy. I don’t deserve to be here.
My grief waited in the background, a shadow ready to engulf me. I needed a plan to deal with Parthalan, but for that moment, I welcomed concentrating on and having the courage to walk through that door.

Garret stepped up beside me. A tiny grin picked up one side of his lips. “At least you’re not going alone.”

With a closer look, I found my older brother, Milo, in Garret’s large eyes and unwieldy blond hair. The resemblance reminded me that I carried pieces of them in me, too. “Thanks, little brother.”

That earned me a heartbreaking smile, my mother’s smile. I cast my eyes away before tears could form and stepped through the door. Garret followed, and Liam came last. The oak portal closed behind us and disappeared, revealing a street in a similar arrangement to the one I’d first seen in the Black City. Long and narrow, made with cobblestone in a light sand color and lined with white buildings on either side.

After a horrible silence, Liam cleared his throat. “I’m not sure what I was expecting, but this isn’t it.”

The sky, similar to the one in the Black City, appeared to be liquid, but instead of purple, it was a mixture of gold, cream and yellow. Grass grew through the cobblestone at our feet, and vines climbed the buildings on either side of us as if the wild had begun to reclaim the land for its own. Not a sound broke the eerie calm. The lack of vibrations or heartbeat at my feet made my heart fall. The air smelled stale, like a tomb sealed off from the living. Maybe that’s what it was.

“What happened here?” I gasped, starved for air. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’d been trying to prepare myself to find my worst fears realized, but to see it before me filled my stomach with needles.

I approached one of the houses—a tall white two-story, narrower at the bottom than the top. After stripping away the ivy, I placed my hands against the surface. It had the same smooth, scaly texture as the ones in the Black City, but it didn’t move. The windows remained dark, and no rhythm of life pulsed within the walls. “Does that mean all of the Seelie are dead, too?”

“I don’t know,” Liam said from somewhere behind me. “I just don’t know.”

When I took my hands away, my bloody hand prints remained. A moment later, the wall absorbed the blood, and a tiny shiver ran through it. My pulse sped up.

“Did you see that? It reacted to my blood. It’s not dead, so … what’s wrong with it?”

“It must need Seelie Light to survive. Every cell holds residual energy, even our blood. If all of the Seelie left Dun Bray when your mother did, then the city must have gone into some sort of hibernation.”

Excitement climbed my bones. “Give me back my Light. I can heal them. I know I can.” Eyes closed, I placed my hands on the wall and pressed to force more of my blood to come out.

“Stop that!” Liam grabbed me by the arm. When I glared at him, he growled and threw his hands wide. The brief touch left a tingling rash along my skin. “Let’s have a look around first.” He took off down the street without looking back. Garret shrugged at me and followed after him.

I jogged to catch up to them. “I won’t do anything to you. You have my oath. Now stop stalling and fix whatever you did to me. These—things, houses, are starving.”

“Not yet.” Liam stopped in the middle of the grass-infested street. He peered down a side street before carrying on in the same direction we’d been travelling. We were going uphill mostly.

“Why not yet? What are you looking for?” I inspected every building as we passed. Some were tall with so many windows reflecting the sky that the entire structure shimmered gold. Some were short and squat with two window eyes and a black door mouth. A few stretched entire blocks, with only a central door and a few narrow windows along the top. All were dull white beneath the tangle of vines, with sagging scale shake roofs and no signs of life.

“Just …” Liam groaned and rubbed fingers along his temples. “Please be quiet until I can figure out where the Court is. If anyone’s here, that’s where they’ll be.”

“If these are my people—shouldn’t I feel them somehow? I mean, if there are any here?”

Liam met my stare, but he didn’t hold it for long.

“Spill it, Liam.”

“There.” Garret pointed up a steep slope to the highest point we could see. “I saw something reflecting up there.

Without a word, Liam started up the hill.

A tiny shred of hope leaked into my thoughts at the possibility of someone alive in Dun Bray.
Please let someone be here.
I had no idea what to do if the three of us had to go against Parthalan alone. If it came to that, the human race would die a violent death, and so would we.

Before we made it halfway to the shining white tower on the hill, a group of fae blinked into existence around us. I shoved Garret between Liam and me as I surveyed the latest pile of shit we’d landed in. I didn’t have enough energy to be scared, or even pissed—only a burning desire to get up that hill.

“Who are you?” I demanded.

The twenty or so fae stared with deep blue eyes similar to mine. They all wore black pants tucked into short black boots and white tunic-style shirts with a golden crest of an eye across the left breast. They could have stepped off the set of a bad Three Musketeers movie.

One had a sword strapped to his side. He stepped forward, extended his open hand. Energy flooded the air as he curled his fingers into a fist as if trying to snatch something out of the air.

When I went to move, my body didn’t obey me. All three of us grunted and growled as we struggled against our invisible chains.

“How did you get in here?” The sword guy tucked his shoulder-length platinum blond hair behind one ear. His brilliant eyes stood out against his pale skin, polished gems against porcelain. He struggled to keep his eyes above the danger line of my red corset. “Only our queen can open …” He squinted at me, drew in a breath.

“That’s right, shithead,” Liam said from behind me. “She’s your queen, so take the fucking cuffs off.”

If I could have turned enough to glare at him, I would have.

The fae with the sword beamed, his eyes shining. He stepped forward and turned my palm over. While I glared at him, he swiped his finger over one of the few puncture wounds that hadn’t yet healed. He put his finger in his mouth and closed his eyes.

“That’s disgusting,” I grumbled.

“It’s true.” He opened his eyes. “Lila Gray has come home at last. Forgive me; I should have seen the resemblance.” He uttered something that removed his hold over me.

“What’s your name?” I said.

“I’m Mannix, captain of your personal guard. Most call me Nix.”

“Well, Nix, are you and your Musketeers here the only Seelie left in Dun Bray?”

He looked over his outfit, chuckling. “No, my Queen—”

“Just Lila.”

He nodded. “There are some still at Court. When the others left, a few of us remained to keep the heart of Dun Bray alive until your return.” He flashed a dazzling smile. Dimples sank into both cheeks. He was pretty, I’d give him that.

“Perfect. Take me to whoever’s in charge. I’m starving, and I need some clothes.” I had to pee like a damn race horse, but I kept that tidbit to myself.

“I’ll take care of you, my—Lila.” Nix’s eyes made the trip down my body but not in a way that insulted me. When his gaze returned to my face, the tightness around his mouth relaxed. “You look like your mother in some ways, but you have a more natural beauty about you.” His focus darted to the corset, then back to my eyes. “I see someone has tried to tame you, but they didn’t succeed. I still see who you are.”