All That Burns (13 page)

The men are dragging me, past Eric’s unconscious form, through the door.

How did this all go so wrong?

“STOP!”

I never knew a girl as petite as Anabelle could roar so loud. The sound bursts through the bunker with the power of a collapsing star.

And everything stops. Jensen stands in the doorway, his face frozen mid-yell, adrenaline and anger flushing red across his cheeks. The men holding me are suspended—steps hanging just inches above the ground. Even the stun guns are still, their charges like portraits of blue lightning.

The last time I saw a room so still was at Windsor Palace, when Breena shouted “
Stillaþ
” and the mortals got caught up in her magic like mosquitoes in amber. There’s magic here too—only it’s not mine or Ferrin’s or Titania’s.

There’s only one other person in this room who carries magic in their veins. . . .

“Oh shit. Shit. Shit. Shit.” Annabelle’s standing on the coffee table, among the ruins of the original tray, looking over the room of mannequin men.

She looks straight at me. “It actually worked.”

The current in the air. The tingle on my skin. The princess’s white face. There’s no mistaking it this time.

The blood magic is awake.

Somehow Princess Anabelle managed to tap into the long-dormant magic in her blood. Her birthright passed
all the way down from King Arthur’s age. Magic not even the Fae could ever fully understand. Magic she’s not even supposed to be able to use.

However she managed to cast it, her spell won’t last long. I can already feel it fading. Soon the royals’ Protection Command will be thawed and moving, ready to drag me back to the interrogation room.

“I have to go, Belle.” I start worming my way out of my captors’ grips. “I’m going to get Richard back.”

“I know. I’m coming with you.” The princess hops off the table, picks her way through immobilized men and teapot shards. She pauses by the cushion where Queen Cecilia is curled up, motionless. “Sorry, Mum. I’ll be back.”

I want to argue; I want to tell her she’s safer here. But the buzz of her magic still edges my teeth, fills my stomach with dread. If I leave her here with the mortals, without
knowing
what the power inside her is capable of . . .

“Besides.” Anabelle weaves her way over to a frozen, outraged Jensen. Fishes a pair of silver keys from his pocket. “Someone has to drive.”

L
ondon’s streets lash by my window. Pubs, double-decker buses, and old gas lampstands blur into a single streak of color. The edge of my seat belt bites into my palms; I clutch its nylon for dear life. I thought I’d adjusted to cars—but it seems that’s only when Anabelle isn’t driving.

Her knuckles grip the steering wheel like iron. She hunches forward in her seat, foot pressed all the way down on the gas pedal. My heart stops with every red light we burst through. It’s nothing short of a miracle that we haven’t been noticed by all the police cars roaming the streets. Though that could be because Anabelle flipped our own blue lights on as soon as she revved the engine.

It reminds me of the day King Edward died, all of these flashing blue lights and neon yellow vests. The throngs of humanity in the streets. Only this crowd isn’t sad or shuffling. There are no tears on their faces. The glimpses I do catch are snapshots of raw, animal emotion. Anger. Fear. Rage.

Their eyes widen as the Jaguar wheels onto the sidewalk. As they scatter, Anabelle swears and jerks the car back toward the street, narrowly clipping the door of a phone booth.

“If we’re going to find Richard, then we have to be in one piece to do it!” My hands twist and strangle the seat belt.

“Sorry!” The princess says, foot still punching hard into the gas pedal. “It’s not like I actually drive these things a lot.”

“I noticed,” I mutter under my breath.

A voice crackles out of the lights and wires of the car’s dashboard. “The bunker has been compromised. Two packages are missing and believed to be in a government-issued Jaguar.”

“They’re looking for us.” Anabelle’s voice is grim as the radio rattles off our license plate number. “Where do we go?”

I hadn’t thought this far ahead. This whole day has been a blur, a horrible dream. It just now feels like I’m waking up, facing the reality of it all. In the space of a few hours my entire world has crumbled. I’d put all bets on Titania, but Julian Forsythe was right: Faery queens are cruel creatures. My lifetimes of service to the Guard,
Richard’s sleepless weeks lobbying for her survival—none of these mattered to Titania. She folded when we needed her most.

And now what do I have?

An empty hand.

I lost Richard. I lost it all.

And yet, somehow, I’m not surprised. I knew it was coming. I dreamt it.

I look down at the bandage on my arm. The wound which keeps breaking open every night, no matter how tight I bind the gauze. As if the ragged nails Guinevere sinks into my arm every nightmare are real . . .

“You found it. But blind eyes still need to see,” I whisper the
faagailagh’s
words back to myself.

It seems Guinevere’s mind isn’t as far gone as Alistair might have me think. She knows something.

There’s only one place I’m going to find answers, and it’s not in London. It’s in the bowels of the deepest, darkest place I’d hoped never to see again.

It’s time to return to the Labyrinth.

Anabelle’s driving doesn’t improve in the countryside. Our tires shred gravel and dirt, coasting over potholes and
stripping leaves off endless rows of hedges.

I felt safer on the Kelpie.

It’s dark by the time we reach the coast. The sleepy town we pull into is lit up like a Christmas village: warm-glow windows and sealed doors. It’s still long before midnight, but the streets are empty. Long stretches of power lines and lonely storefronts. The feel of the sea rides on the air: life and death and salt and gray.

With a twist of Anabelle’s wrist the Jaguar’s engine dies. We both sit for a moment, soaking in the heat of the car. For the first time in a day I feel like I can breathe.

I look over at the princess. Lion-mane hair, eyes crusted with day-old makeup. Her fingers are still wrapped tight around the steering wheel. “Belle. What you did back there . . . in the bunker. To those men . . . You did it before. Didn’t you? At Windsor. With the flower vase.”

“I—” Some color bleeds back into her face. “Yes. But it was an accident. I didn’t mean to break it.”

“But why did you hide it?” I ask.

Anabelle takes a deep breath. She’s staring out the windshield at a pair of seagulls feasting on a pile of fried fish wrapped in newspaper. “Richard made me promise not to tell.”

When she says his name my stomach feels gutted.

“It’s been happening to him too.” She keeps talking. Still staring at the bedraggled, huddled birds. “Ever since the first Lights-down. It’s just been little accidents. I had an argument with Mum while we were addressing coronation invitations and the calligraphy ink exploded everywhere. And then the vase . . .”

My throat squeezes tight. I think of all the times we were together. All the times he stayed quiet . . . “Why? Why didn’t he tell me?”

“He didn’t want to worry you. And he was afraid . . .” Her voice wilts. “He was afraid you would get hurt.”

I am hurt. Hurt that something so big, so important was happening to Richard. That the rift of secrets between us was so much larger than I realized.

What else didn’t he tell me?

Will I ever have the chance to find out?

“At first I thought it was hiccups: random spurts. But then I realized it happened whenever I got upset. I felt it rising in Westminster Abbey and the bunker. I was holding it back, until Protection Command started taking you away,” Anabelle says. “That was the first time I actually
tried
to use it.”

“Don’t.” My eyes bore straight into the princess’s. “Don’t try it again.”

“But—”

“Magic isn’t something you play with.” I cut her off. “It’s wild. Dangerous. If you don’t know what you’re doing, it can go very, very wrong.”

I know what I’m saying is harsh, but I’m not thinking straight. My thoughts are tangled, looping me back through the past. Reminding me how—ages and ages ago—the mortals gleaned the Fae’s magic and made it their own. They twisted it into dozens of variations, both brilliant and brutal. Many, many lives were destroyed by such infinite power in such finite hands.

There were very few humans strong enough to bear the burden of magic. In the end, it even ruined King Arthur.

A lone streetlight slants through the tinted windshield, wraps around the princess like a halo. Something about how harsh it is against her face shows me just how young she is.

Just seventeen. How easy it is for me to forget. Despite her brave, steel-hide moments and her almost supernatural ability to have everything perfect, Anabelle is still a fragile
thing. A glass ballerina, one fall from cracking.

She doesn’t—
can’t
—know the power she wields. Not yet.

“I’m sorry,” I say slowly. “I didn’t mean to yell. It’s just . . . it’s very important that you keep things under control. If you don’t, a lot of people could get hurt.

“I want you to promise me you won’t use it. Even if we find ourselves in a bad situation,” I add, “try to hold it back, like you did in the bunker. We’ll find another way.”

Anabelle tears her eyes from mine.

“Promise,” I say again, my voice stretched.

The princess’s words come out quiet. “I promise.”

“We’ll get this sorted. We’ll find Richard,” I tell her.

“What are we doing here?” Anabelle nods out into the ghost village, where the sign for the White Dragon Pub swings back and forth in the breeze.

“We’re going to the Isle of Man. There’s a sailboat docked on the edge of town. Ferrin and Lydia used it to take me there last time.”

“How is this going to help us find Richard?”

“It’s—complicated.”

“Then uncomplicate it.” Anabelle brings her forehead down onto the steering wheel. “I’m going a little bit insane here. My brother has just been kidnapped and I’ve been
spewing magic like a busted fire hydrant. Plus I’ve just driven a stolen car all the way across the bloody country. I just need something.
Anything
.”

“Look, I know this will sound . . . strange. But that dream I told you about this morning. I think someone
sent
it to me. They were trying to warn me that this was going to happen.”

“And this someone is on the Isle of Man?”

“Under it. In a prison for Fae.”

“Wait—” The princess sits up straight in her seat. “What? A prison?”

“There’s a maze of tunnels under the island. Mab used it to trap her enemies and anyone she disliked.” I give her the short version. I’m starting to squirm against the leather seat, watch the road into town for headlights. We shouldn’t stay here too much longer.

“And you think one of these prisoners has answers?” Anabelle presses. “You think they know where Richard is?”

I can only hope this trip is something more than grasping at straws and dreams.

“Something like that. We should get going.”

“Right then.” Anabelle flips down the Jaguar’s vanity mirror and rakes her hair out of her face, back into a tight
coil. She smudges sparkle and kohl from her eyes. A few flicks and swishes and she’s a clean slate again. Repelling chaos like a stainproof tablecloth.

She finishes, turns, and looks at me. Ready. “Let’s go sailing.”

T
he Ad-hene are waiting.

Sixteen shadows, sixteen flares of silver light winking over the iron-dark waves. Calling us to their jagged coastline. The scar-marks draw closer with the current and Anabelle’s secondary-school sailing skills. With every wave which brings us in to shore, I feel a new layer of their uniform magic. Earthy, raw, yearning.

The last feeling must be mine, I realize, as the princess ties the boat off. A yearning for lost things, as empty and cold as the wind licking these stones. The steps have already been sculpted for us. As uneven and toothy as wolf fangs.

“I’m not going to lie,” Anabelle whispers as we start our climb toward the Ad-hene’s flickering lights. “I’m already a little creeped out.”

“Let me do the talking.” I push ahead of her.

Alistair stands at the front of the group. Half-lidded and head tilted, as if he’s about to nod off into dreams.
But sharp black eyes cut behind those lids: quick and questioning.

“Lady Emrys. We were not expecting you. Titania sent no sparrow.”

I stare down the queue of scar-lights. The exact same pattern—tangling and worming, silver and changing—sixteen times. Most of the Ad-hene’s faces are too far or dark to see. But a certain pair of eyes snares mine.

Kieran. He’s standing just behind Alistair, second in line. Watching me the way he did when we last stood on this cliff. Something about his stare, just behind its gray, winter sky hardness, makes me look away.

I clear my throat, find my voice. “This is quite a welcome for an unexpected visit.”

“Your auras called to us, from across the sea. We do not get many visitors.” Alistair’s dark eyes slide over my shoulder, where Anabelle stands on her tiptoes, trying to watch without being watched. “You—”

Fifteen other gazes shift, lock onto the princess in a single motion. Kieran’s eyes narrow—there’s a flicker in them I can’t fully read. Surprise, familiarity, then nothing.

They stare and stare at her. Anabelle—the princess who handles paparazzi and press with such cool—starts to squirm. “Me?”

“You’re not a Frithemaeg.” Alistair lets the observation linger on the air.

“Guess that makes two of us,” the princess quips back.

“But you’re not completely mortal either. Nor a
faagailagh
.”

“Of course I’m mortal.” Anabelle shivers. “Now if we could please stop talking about
fitzgathers
or whatever, and get on to finding my brother that would be bloody lovely.”

“Your brother?” The leader of the Ad-hene blinks. His stare flows back to me: smooth, powerful, dark as a deep sea current. “Why are you here, Lady Emrys?”