“My resources are considerable,” he said. “You’ll always be safe in this house. Neither Grace nor Ethan is strong enough to overcome the spells I’ve placed on it.”
“What about Lachlan?”
Dad dismissed him with a wave of his hand. “Lachlan is a non-issue. He may be a physically impressive specimen, and I would not wish to face him in combat, but it would take something more sophisticated than brute force to breach my defenses.” His voice held a hint of contempt that I didn’t understand.
“But he is Fae, right? Even though he doesn’t look it?”
Dad didn’t actually wrinkle his nose, but his facial expression wasn’t far from it. “He is a creature of Faerie, but he is of the lower orders. His sort is not customarily permitted in Avalon, but with Grace championing him…”
Apparently, Dad was a snob. Lachlan might have been my jailor, but he was still one of the nicest people I’d met in Avalon. I felt almost offended by Dad’s attitude. I must have looked it, too, because he traded the nose-in-the-air expression for one of rueful amusement.
“We are a very class-conscious bunch, we Fae,” he said. The amusement faded. “You must understand that although Avalon has officially seceded from Faerie, the Fae are still Fae. We recognize one another as Seelie or Unseelie, even though technically we don’t owe allegiance to the Courts anymore. And in Faerie, the concept of all men being equal is so ridiculous as to be almost sacrilege. The Sidhe—what you think of when you think of Fae—are the aristocracy of Faerie. Lachlan is not Sidhe. I am.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, still feeling defensive on Lachlan’s behalf. “So what you’re saying is that because you’re Sidhe, you’re better than him?”
I expected him to say something placating. Instead, he just looked me in the eye and said, “Yes.”
I blinked in shock. There were a lot of people in this world who thought they were better than everyone else, but I couldn’t ever remember hearing anyone actually admit they felt that way.
“Lachlan is a troll,” my father continued. “He wears a human glamour—if he didn’t, even Grace wouldn’t have been able to bring him in legally—but that doesn’t change what he is beneath.”
I felt sick to my stomach. Dad wasn’t just a snob—he was a bigot. I had wanted to like him, maybe even love him eventually, but I couldn’t imagine liking a bigot.
Dad leaned toward me, and it was all I could do not to lean away in response.
“The Fae of Avalon play at being human,” he told me, “but we’re not. We will always be creatures of Faerie first, citizens of Avalon second. Some young bucks like Alistair Leigh think they can change that, but the Fae do not change. We will never be an egalitarian people, nor will we ever break free from the Courts.
“We belong to the Court of our parents, and we belong to that Court as long as we live. Anyone who says otherwise is either deluded or naive.”
I had a feeling there was a subtle message in my father’s words. We belong to the Court of our parents. In other words, even though I’m half human, I “belong” to the Seelie Court. Of course, he’d already given me that message when he’d sent me the cameo. I just hadn’t been able to read it.
“That is the reason tensions always run so high when it is time for a Fae to take the position of Consul,” my father continued. “Whether the Consul is Seelie or Unseelie matters little to Avalon’s human citizens, but to the Fae…” He shuddered theatrically, then flashed me another rueful smile. “I’d like to hate your mother for spiriting you away, not even letting me know you exist.” The smile faded, and he sighed. “But try as I might, I can’t blame her.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything at all. I could blame my mom for a lot of things she’d done, but trying to keep me out of Avalon wasn’t one of them. If I’d known the truth from the beginning, I never would have come.
I leaned forward to put my cup, still half-full, on the table. As if it had a will of its own, the cameo slid out from beneath my shirt. I was sure my dad noticed, though he didn’t say anything. It would probably have been a good time to confront him about sending it