Wild. Aprilynne Pike

      “Not. . . exactly.” Tamani bit his bottom lip and sighed. Where to begin? “Once upon a time,” he began, remembering that humans liked to start their most accurate histories this way, “there were two faerie courts. Their rivalry was. . . complicated, but it boiled down to human contact. One court was friendly to humans – the humans called them Seelie. The other court sought to dominate humans, enslave them, torment them for amusement, or kill them for sport. They were the Unseelie.

      “Somewhere along the way, a rift developed in the Seelie Court. There were some fae who believed that the best thing we could do for the humans was leave them alone. Isolationists, basically.”

      “Isn’t that how the fae live now?”

      “Yes,” Tamani said. “But they never used to. The Seelie even made treaties with some human kingdoms – including Camelot.”

      “But that failed, right?” asked Laurel. “That’s what you said at the festival last year.”

      “Well, it worked for a while. In some ways the pact with Camelot was a huge success. With Arthur’s help, the Seelie drove the trolls out of Avalon for good and hunted the Unseelie practically to extinction. But eventually, things. . . fell apart.”

      It pained Tamani to gloss over so much detail, but when it came to the Unseelie, it was hard to decide where one explanation ended and another began. And it would take him hours to explain everything that had gone wrong in Camelot. Especially considering that, even in Avalon, the story was ancient enough for its accuracy to be disputed. Some claimed that the memories collected in the World Tree kept their history pure, but – having conversed with the Silent Ones himself – Tamani did not think it gave answers straight enough to qualify as historical facts.

      He would have to do his best with what he had.

      “When the trolls overran Camelot, it was taken as final proof that even our most well-intentioned involvement with humans was doomed to end in disaster. The isolationists rose to power. Everyone else was branded Unseelie.”

      “So part of the Seelie Court became the new Unseelie Court?”

      Tamani frowned. “Well, there hasn’t been an Unseelie ‘Court’ in more than a thousand years. But Titania was dethroned, Oberon crowned as rightful king, and the universal decree was that, for the good of the human race, the fae would leave humans alone forever. Everyone was summoned back to Avalon, Oberon created the gates, and for the most part we’ve been isolated ever since. But the idea that faeries should meddle in human affairs – as benefactors or