The Glass Man - Lila Gray Book 1

Chapter Sixteen

I hung limp over Parthalan's shoulder, like a useless sack of flower. How humiliating. Upside down, my cheek bumping against the small of his back, I watched the stairs fall away as he carried me back up to the castle gate. I twisted enough to see around his torso—it seemed right to be prepared for whatever was coming, even if I couldn't do a damn thing about it.

Giant arched doors, like the one in the portal chamber, stood before us. One of the enormous panels creaked open. He crossed the threshold and tossed me onto the black marble floor. It shined with a recent polish, and the room held a mild scent of lemon mixed with death.

Rodan and the rest of the Host I'd seen on the street outside the house filed in after us and shut the door with a resounding crash.

Parthalan turned to Rodan, his voice commanding respect. "Put a call out to the rest of the Host. Garret and Donovan are to be brought to me immediately. Do not fail me."

Rodan dipped his head. His black hood draped his face in shadow, but it didn't hide the disdain in his glowing eyes. He gave subtle hand signals, and several of his brethren slipped out the door.

I climbed to my feet and stared up at the ceiling several stories above me. "Something's moving up there." When I looked closer, the entire expanse boiled black and silver. "No, scratch that. A lot of something's are moving up there."

"Those are the Bean Sidhe," Parthalan said. "Some call them banshee, pets of the Host. They keep a vigilant watch over the Court. Best not to upset them, my darling."

There must have been thousands, but the way they writhed around one another made it hard to tell. Women's faces floated in black rags. No eyes, only dark holes where they should have been, and gaping, toothless mouths. My eyes grew larger by the second. I backed up, my bound hands groping for the door handle behind me, but I ended up grabbing fabric instead.

Shit.

Turning around was tantamount to opening my eyes after a nightmare: I didn't want to, but some compulsion made it happen, anyway. The fabric I'd groped belonged to Rodan, who stared down his black beak at me. His seawater eyes conveyed sick amusement. He probably enjoyed stabbing people in the eye, too.

My heart tried to climb my throat.

Parthalan eyed me, laughing right from his belly. "Oh, I do love to watch you squirm, my darling."

"Go to hell," I whispered under my breath.

"Rodan, take Lila to my chambers and keep a guard on the door."

The captain gave that subtle nod again and kept staring at me. His face wrinkled up around his eyes as though he grinned somewhere in the shadow of his face. The creepy undead guy needed only a moment to snap my neck and whisk me off to the bone yard that would turn me into a bird zombie. Without my Light, I had nothing to defend myself with.

I searched the hall for an escape. Nothing but strangers who were probably Unseelie scum, eyeless banshees, and more feathered creeps. That left Parthalan. For once, I considered him the lesser of many evils.

"I'd like you to take me." I sauntered back to the Unseelie king, swinging my hips with faked enthusiasm. He braced himself at first, staring at me with a wrinkled brow.

After a few moments of hesitation, his shoulders flattened, and he slid his arm around my shoulders. "Very well." He sounded pleased with himself, and I wanted to hit him.

He led me away from the cavernous hall, down a wide corridor lined with the same black marble as the entrance. Thick vines snaked along the ceiling everywhere I looked, brilliant emerald lines on the dark backdrop. Tiny yellow flowers appeared in clusters.