Swallowing Darkness by Laurell K. Hamilton Page A

my blood isn’t pure enough.”
    Doyle rubbed his thumb along my knuckles. It was a nervous gesture, and it meant that he wondered the same thing. Was it what Gran said, like calls to like? Was I simply not sidhe enough to help the pure-bloods?
    “Doyle,” Galen said, “are you bleeding?” He moved up to the other man, and touched his back. His fingers came away with dots of crimson on them.

CHAPTER FOUR
    DOYLE DIDN’T FLINCH OR OTHERWISE REACT. “IT IS A VERY small wound.”
    “But how did it happen?” Galen asked.
    “I believe the glass is coated with some sort of man-made material,” Doyle said.
    “So because it’s man-made and not natural,” I said, “it was able to cut you?”
    “Normal glass would have still cut me.”
    “But it would have healed by now,” I said, “without the man-made coating?”
    “It is a small cut, so yes.”
    “But you were covering Merry’s body when you were cut,” Gran said, and her voice was flat, almost without accent. She could do that when she wished, though it didn’t happen often.
    “Yes,” he said, and looked at her.
    She swallowed hard. “I do nae have the magic resistance to be near my Merry right now, do I?”
    “It is sidhe magic we will be fighting,” he said.
    She nodded, and a look of deep sorrow came over her face. “I cannae be with ya, Merry. I cannae resist what they will make me do. It’s one of the reasons I left their court. A brownie is a servant there, and when we are invisible to them we are safe, but brownies were ne’r meant to dabble in court politics.”
    I reached out to her. “Gran, please.”
    Rhys stepped between us as she moved forward. “Not a good idea yet. We need to look at the spell first.”
    “I would say I would n’er hurt my girl, but if the Darkness…if Captain Doyle had not protected her, I would have cut her ’stead of his back.”
    “What could they have offered to Merry’s cousin?” Galen asked. “Mayhap the thing they offered me centuries ago,” Gran said.
    “What was that?” Galen asked.
    “A chance to bed, and if with child, marry one of their Seelie nobles. No one will touch Cair for fear that her…deformity will breed true. I was only half human, and I worked in the court as a brownie, but I saw the Seelie and I wished to be a part of it. I was a fool, but it earned my girls a chance to be a part of that glittering mess. But Cair is always outside of it, because she looks too much like her ol’ Gran.”
    “Gran,” I said, “it’s not…”
    “No, child, I know what face I bear, and I know that it takes a special sidhe to love it. I ne’r found that sidhe, but I was not part sidhe. I did na’ have the blood of the court running in my veins. I was a brownie who got uppity, but Cair, she is one of them. It must be a thing of great pain to watch the others with their perfect faces get what she longs for.”
    “I know what it is like to be denied a place at court,” Sholto said, “because you are not perfect enough to be bedded. The Unseelie sidhe run scared of my bed, for fear they will breed monsters.”
    Gran nodded, and finally looked at him. “I am sorry that I said some of the things I said, Shadow Lord. I should know better’n most what it is to be hated for bein’ less than sidhe.”
    He nodded. “The Queen called me Her Creature. Until Merry came to me, I thought I would be doomed to live out my life until I became simply Creature, as Doyle is Darkness.” He smiled at me then, with that intimate look that he hadn’t quite earned yet. It was so odd to be pregnant after only one night with a man. But then, hadn’t that been what had happened with my parents? One night of sex, and my mother had been trapped in a marriage she did not want. Seven years of marriage before she was allowed to divorce him.
    “Aye, the courts are cruel, though I had hoped the dark court would be a little less so.”
    “They accept more,” Doyle said, “but even the Unseelie have their