Stalking Darkness

or later. But not me. Not yet, anyway.”
    The few inches between them felt like cold miles. Clasping his flask, Alec asked, “Why are you telling me this now? Does it have something to do with what Nysander meant?”
    “In a way. It’s something I don’t want secret between us anymore, not after tonight.” He took another drink and rubbed his eyelids. “Nysander’s been after me since he met you to tell you that—” Seregil turned to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Alec, you’re ’faie.”
    There was a gravid pause.
    Alec heard the words, but for an instant he couldn’t seem to take them in and make sense of them. He’d rehearsed a dozen dark possibilities during their walk from the Palace, but this had not been one of them. He felt the flask slip from his fingers, felt it bounce on the damp, dead grass between his feet. “That can’t be!” he gasped, his voice unsteady. “My father, he wasn’t—”
    But suddenly it all fell into place—Seregil’s questions about his parents, veiled remarks Nysander had made, all the rumors that he and Seregil were somehow related. The impact of this sudden revelation made him sway where he sat. Seregil’s grip on his shoulder tightened, but he could scarcely feel it.
    “My mother.”
    “The Hâzadriëlfaie,” Seregil said gently, “from beyond Ravensfell Pass near where you were born.”
    “But how can you know that?” Alec whispered. It felt like the entire earth was spinning out from beneath his feet, leaving him stranded in a place he couldn’t comprehend. At the same time, it all made terrible sense: his father’s silence regarding his mother, his distrust of strangers, his coldness. “Could she still be there?”
    “Do you recall how I told you the Hâzadriëlfaie left Aurënen a long, long time ago? That their ways are different than ours? They don’t tolerate any outsiders, especially humans, and they kill any half-breeds that are born, along with the parents. Somehow your mother must have broken away long enough to meet your father and have you, but her own people must have hunted her down in the end. Even if she’d gone back of her own accord, the penalty would still have been death. It’s a miracle your father and you escaped. He must have been a remarkable man.”
    “I never thought so.” Alec’s pulse was pounding in his ears. This was too much, too much. “I don’t understand. How can you know any of this?”
    “I don’t, for certain, but it fits the facts we do know. Alec, there’s no getting around the fact that you
are
’faie. I saw the signs that first morning in the mountains, but I didn’t want to believe it then.”
    “Why not?”
    Seregil hesitated, then shook his head. “I was afraid I was wrong, just seeing what I wanted to see. But I wasn’t wrong—your features, your build, the way you move. Micum saw it right away, and the centaurs and Nysander and the others at the Orëska. Then, that first night we came back to the Cockerel, I went out again, remember? I went to the Oracle of Illior about another matter and during the divinations, he spoke of you, called you a ‘child of earth and light’—Dalna and Illior, human and ’faie—there was no question what he meant. Nysander wanted me to tell you from the start but—”
    At that, a wave of anger burst up through Alec’s shocked numbness. Lurching to his feet, he rounded on Seregil, crying out, “Why didn’t you? All these months and you never said
anything!
It’s like that Wheel Street trick all over again!”
    Seregil’s face was half black, half bone pale in the moonlight, but both eyes glittered. “It’s nothing like Wheel Street!”
    “Oh, no?” Alec shouted. “Then what, damn it! Why?
Why didn’t you tell me?”
    Seregil seemed to sag. Lowering his face, he rested both hands on his knees. After a moment he let out a ragged breath. “There’s no single answer to that. At first, because I wasn’t certain.” He shook his head. “No, that’s not true. In my heart I
was
certain, but I didn’t dare believe it.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because if I was wrong—” Seregil spread his hands helplessly. “It doesn’t matter. I’d been alone for a long time and I thought I liked it that way. I knew if I was right, and if I told you then, if you’d even believed me, then it might create a bond, a tie. I wasn’t willing to risk that either, not until I figured out who you were. Illior’s Hands, Alec, you don’t know,