Bailey Morgan [2] Fate by Jennifer Lynn Barnes

older and slightly more like they were considering devouring me whole, said nothing, instead choosing to segregate themselves on the other side of the fire. They
whispered behind pale hands, and something about the pointed glances they were shooting my way reminded me of the popular girls at my high school.
    Great,
I thought.
I'm a dorky Sidhe. Because being part of an ancient fairy race isn't difficult enough on its own.
    The girls who had spoken to me met my eyes again, and there was something about the tilt of their pearly pink mouths that seemed vaguely familiar. Before I could quite sort out what it was, one of the two males stepped forward.
    “I'm Xane,” he said, “heir to the Unseelie throne.”
    Xane,
I thought.
Rhymes with Kane.
Like my ex, Xane held himself with a certain amount of confidence that I'd come to identify over time as arrogance, absolute certainty that whatever he wanted, he would be able to have. Including me.
    “I am Axia.” One of the pearly-mouthed girls spoke again, and even though the expression on her face never changed, I couldn't shake the feeling that she was rolling her eyes at Xane's airs. “This is my sister, Lyria. Our mother is Eze.” Axia added that last bit almost hesitantly, as if she wasn't quite sure whether she wanted to claim her mother, let alone the throne, for herself.
    For her part, Lyria said nothing and offered me a shy smile. I wondered how Eze had given birth to daughters like these.
    “I take after my father,” Xane said, lifting the thought from my head with a smirk that made me wonder whether he was perceptive or able to get past my psychic shields. “Axia and Lyria are not so clearly begotten.”
    “We will one day share the Seelie throne,” Axia said.
    “If there's still a Seelie throne to share,” Xane scoffed.
    Lyria frowned at him, but said nothing.
    While the heirs argued among themselves, I turned the words I'd heard over and over in my head.
Seelie. Unseelie.
Light and dark, two parts of the same whole. I found that I didn't have to ask for definitions of these terms, the same way that I'd always known instinctively how to spell
Sidhe,
even though it wasn't written at all the way it was pronounced.
    “They'll be at it for hours,” a voice whispered directly into my ear.
    If I'd been in my world and not theirs, I would have jumped, but I was a different Bailey here, and I found that his presence didn't surprise me, that I'd known he was next to me, edging closer all the time.
    “Drogan and Xane don't venture forth from their domain very often,” the voice continued, “and when they do, Xane makes it a point to argue with Eze's daughters the way Eze typically argues with his father.”
    I turned to meet my whisperer's eyes. Like all of the Sidhe (except for me), his were blue, so light that there was barely any color in them at all. His hair was an odd combination of brown and red, the kind of hair color the sidekick on an afternoon television show might have. His skin glowed, but it made him look more sunburnt than ethereal. His features were even and perfect, but the myriad of expressions that danced across them as I surveyed him looked comfortingly commonplace.
    “I'm James,” he said.
    “James?” I asked. Adea, Valgius, Eze, Drogan, Axia, Lyria, Xane, and … James. Something about that seemed just a little off.
    “Is there something wrong with my name?” James asked, the edges of his lips quirking upward as I tried to think of a diplomatic way to answer his question.
    “There's nothing wrong with it,” I said, grateful for his cheerful disposition and the fact that in this incarnation my voice was incapable of squeaking. “It just seems kind of … human.”
    James's face changed at the word
human,
almost as if I'd said a deliciously naughty word or made a dirty joke.
    “It was my name first, you know, ” James said, his tone completely conversational. “It's not my fault that I may have allegedly crossed over to the mortal realm