“I’m in the Ley Court?” My eyes widen, my head swimming as Callum nods. “I can’t be here. Humans can’t survive on magical ground. I’ll burn up.”
“You’re not human, Elorie.”
My face blanks, and the same bad feeling I got when I stepped inside the prison stirs inside me now.
Callum’s shoulders slump as he looks up from where he’s kneeling. “I should say, you’re notentirelyhuman. You’re half-Fae.”
“Half-Fae?” My mouth turns to sand. “That’s not possible. Fae can’t bear a child with a human woman.”
“No, they can’t. But a human man can create a child with a female Fae.”
I shake my head, revolting at that thought. “My mother was human. Father met her on Alyssium, and there are no female Fae in the Guard on Alyssium.”
“No one said she was of the Guard.”
But that would mean…
“The prison.” My breath seizes with my whisper.
Therearefemale Fae on Alyssium. Imprisoned ones.
“Yes.” Callum’s confirmation turns my blood cold.
This can’t be the answer Father was referring to. He would have told me himself if my mother were Fae. A prisoner, at that.
“How do you know?”
Callum’s chin dips with his sigh. “I was outside the prison the night Laef carried you out.”
“You helped him hide me?”
He nods once.
“My mother…” My breath catches. “Is she dead?”
“I don’t know.” Callum pushes to standing. “I don’t even know who she is. Laef never went back, and he made me swear I wouldn’t dig for answers.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t tell me.”
My father was hiding a mountain of secrets, and he wasn’t the only one. “But you knew all this time who I was?WhatI was?”
“What youare, Elorie.” Callum brushes his dark hair back, and unlike the cold expression he gave me outside the prison, sympathy has returned to his eyes.
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I couldn’t. Half-Fae are that of the lore. They’re rare, especially now with magic dying. Fae themselves can barely birth children, much less create them with a human. It’s why Laef kept you a secret. It would raise questions. And considering where your mother was?—”
“They’d have me executed.”
Callum nods.
It’s no secret what happens to the offspring of prisoners. I grew up hearing the story of a Fae they imprisoned before she gave birth. The day the child was born, the prison led a human guard straight to her cell. They burned her baby on the pyre that night. And to this day, the forest wind still shrieks with the mother’s cries.
“Is that why I’m here now? They’re going to execute me because I’m the daughter of a prisoner?” I shift in the chains.
They pinch. But worse than that, they itch where they’re rubbing my skin. It makes sense now why the obsidian bothersme. Although, I don’t understand why they feel worse now than they did before, if I’ve always had Fae blood running through my veins.