All That Burns (18 page)

In the harsh black patch of sky beyond, the north star begins to bloom.

We wait.

I spend hours on the rooftop, scanning blue skies for the sparrow. There are scores of them, but none wing my way. None of them carry the news we so badly need.

Anabelle treats the house like a medieval fortress, or a blitz bomb shelter. The window shades stay drawn, even in the height of day. Every thirty minutes she peers through the front door’s mail slot—scanning the street for suspicious vehicles. At least one of the six television screens is always on: an endless barrage of Coronation Day replays,
riot reports, and exclusive interviews.

The princess’s second distraction is a slightly more useful one. Cooking. She plunged into the vast walk-in pantry, armed with spatulas and whisks and Kieran’s magic to help substitute all the missing ingredients. By the end of the next day, the dining table is crammed full of Anabelle’s culinary pursuits: soufflés, cucumber sandwiches, petits fours, a whole lamb drizzled in mint sauce.

More food than we could eat in a month. And I certainly don’t plan on being here that long.

I didn’t even plan on being here
this
long. Titania’s answer should’ve been here by now. A thought which makes my stomach turn. Makes the platters of food in front of me useless.

“I can’t believe you lied about liking the fish and chips!” Anabelle’s pretty face is twisted into a mock scowl—more smile than smirk—as she looks over at Kieran.

Kieran looks only half-petrified as he watches the princess sort through all the dishes she fixed between newscasts and mail-slot spying. He stumbles for an answer. “It—it was not my favorite. I didn’t want you to feel poorly.”

“We’re going to find
something
you like.” She grabs a spoon and a soufflé and sets them both in front of the
stiff spirit. “Try this. It’s chocolate. Everyone likes chocolate.”

He grasps the stem of the spoon full-fisted and shoves it into the airy cake. Chocolate—molten, sweet, and crumbly—drips from the spoon’s edge into his mouth. Kieran swallows the spoonful and sets the utensil down. I can see he’s trying his hardest to keep his face straight.

“Really? But it’s
chocolate
!” The princess rescues the soufflé and takes a spoonful of her own. “Delicious, gooey, fattening chocolate!”

“It’s—not my favorite,” he says again.

“Right, then. We’ll strike all things sinful and delicious off the list.” Anabelle reaches for another dish. “What about black pudding?”

“Sounds ominous.” Kieran looks from the dish of blood sausage to where I sit. “Still no sparrow?”

I shake my head, and Anabelle then prods the Ad-hene on, “You’re not getting out of this that easily. Try it.”

He obeys, using his chocolate-coated soufflé spoon. This time he doesn’t bother hiding his distaste.

“Let me guess. It’s not your favorite.” Anabelle isn’t even pretending to scowl now. Her smile is the kind which holds back a laugh. An infectious thing which spreads to Kieran’s features: The lines of his face rearrange into
something soft, almost human.

The Ad-hene shakes his head. She reaches for another dish.

I’m not sure if I can keep sitting here. With so much food and almost-laughter I have no appetite for. Neither of them seems to notice when I make my exit up to the roof, where the skies grow dark and no birds fly. I pull out a lounge chair anyway, watching and waiting for something that never comes.

By the time I go back downstairs the kitchen is clean and the food put away. Most of the lights are off, and with all the curtains drawn I have to fumble my way around islands of antique furniture. There’s a single slice of light, drawn down the very end of the long hall.

I stop just at the end of the jarred door, peer into the master bedroom.

The television is on, flashing the same awful footage of the Black Dog taking apart the crowd. Anabelle sits in front of it, cross-legged, her hair damp and dripping from the shower. But she isn’t looking at the screen. She’s focused on the fire in her palms—the same false heat and harmless flames Kieran offered her in the Labyrinth. She’s bolder with it this time, molding it like
artist’s clay with her fingers.

The twist of heat fills Kieran’s eyes as he watches Anabelle. In his hands are a fork and a canning jar full of beetroot. He chews the vegetable slowly as he focuses on the flames, the princess manipulating them.

I see he’s found something he likes.

“Impressive,” the Ad-hene says as she lassoes the fire into a knot.

Pink begins to creep into Anabelle’s cheeks. “I was just muddling around.”

“No one’s taught you how to wield your magic, have they?” The Ad-hene edges closer to her. Her flame.

“Who said anything about magic?” Anabelle’s voice goes sharp. “I just wanted this for my hair. Next best thing to a blow dryer.”

“You’re manipulating my spell.” Kieran nods at the fire in her palms. “Changing its very structure. That’s something not even the Fae can do.”

Anabelle’s eyes widen. She takes both palms and crumples the flame, traps it like a moth in the cage of her fingers. “I—I didn’t know.”

The Ad-hene stays still for a moment. Embers flicker in the gaps of the princess’s fingers, flecking light into both of their faces. The screen behind them slides into a
shot of the Palace of Westminster. Protestors and signs swarm around it, boiling with anger.

“In the square you were building a spell, but you did not unleash it. You’re afraid,” Kieran says, as sure and solid as if he’s read her soul. “Why?”

“I don’t—I’m not—” The red of Anabelle’s cheeks grows deeper. I’ve never seen her so flustered before.

“You shouldn’t be afraid of power,” Kieran tells her. “It’s a gift.”

“I’m not afraid of power,” the princess says, her hands still clasped over the flame. “I’m afraid of hurting people. Of losing control.”

“So you think that it’s better to hide your nature? Ignore it?” Kieran sets down his half-finished beetroot jar and grabs her hand, folding her palms open. The fire rears up again, sears the air between them. “You can’t escape who you are, Princess. Perhaps for a while. But your true self will always rise in the end. It will always shine through.”

The princess looks down at the flame in her hands. At the Ad-hene’s fingers wrapped around hers. “Emrys told me it’s dangerous. She made me promise not to use it.”

“How can Lady Emrys tell you what to do with your power when she’s too afraid to embrace her own?”

My breath goes sharp, taking in the stab of his words. I’m leaning so hard against the hallway wall that my shoulder’s gone numb.

“She’s not afraid.” Anabelle is playing with the fire again, letting it dance up her arm, wrap around Kieran’s fingers. “She’s in love.”

“I’m not sure I would know how to tell the difference.” The Ad-hene watches the tendrils of flame creep up his sleeve. His eyes grow brighter. “Have you ever been in love?”

“There were a few boys I fancied in school, but not like that. Not yet.” Anabelle looks at him through the fire. “You?”

He doesn’t answer. Their fire burns in silence: shimmer, flicker, shake. Beautiful heat. The whole room radiates with it.

“Do you think I could learn? How to do spells without . . . without hurting people?” Anabelle asks. “Could you teach me?”

I nudge the door with my foot. It falls open with a creak. Anabelle jerks away from the Ad-hene’s touch. The fire in her palm flares, as if it’s been fed a shot of petrol. Kieran doesn’t move.

My heart beats hollow in my throat—all the emptiness
of the sky and the hollowed space inside my chest threatening to spill out. I point to the fire in Anabelle’s hands. “Put it out.”

“I was just drying my hair. Bridget took her blow dryer with her,” she says. “I’m not doing anything wrong.”

“Belle, you don’t know what you’re messing with. . . .” I’m not sure if I’m talking about the Ad-hene or the flame. Probably both.

“What?” Anabelle stands, so we’re eye-to-eye. “Because it’s dangerous?”

“Yes.” My throat strains from trying not to yell.

“Dangerous how?” There’s an edge of challenge in the princess’s voice. Her steel-self rising, clad in all of Kieran’s clever, silver words.

“The Fae’s magic is fueled by nature. Mortals’ magic is fueled by emotion. It’s less stable,” I tell her.

“What’s so bad about that?” Anabelle asks. “I’m sick of sitting in this house and baking soufflés! I want to
do
something, Emrys! And now I
can
.”

I think of the last age when mortals wielded magic so freely. How its reign ended with King Arthur’s death—in an awful field of blood and fire.

I cannot let our new Camelot burn.

“You’re not ready,” I tell her.

The flame in Anabelle’s hand jumps brighter, becomes a flickering veil between us. I feel its heat, her anger, from all the way across the room. “You just want to keep me from doing magic because you can’t!”

Her words wrap around my heart like a bullwhip. I can’t stop the anger it wakes.

“I chose it. To be with your brother.”

“Then let me have my choice!” she yells back.

The fire soars now. Behind that raging screen of flames the princess looks . . . wild. Her hair is everywhere, streams of gold touched by Midas. The fire’s light hollows out her cheeks, burnishes the anger in her eyes.

I walk over to where she stands and grab the flames. My palms smart, sting with the heat, but I don’t let go.

At first it’s like plunging my hand into a bucket of eels, grasping writhe and slip. But then I dredge up the remainder of my magic. It’s enough to reap the flames, pluck them from the princess’s trembling fingers.

“You don’t know what you’re dealing with, Belle.” I press the fire down in my raw palms, squash it like an insect. The room flickers with its death throes. “This isn’t a game. This is life and death.”

For a long moment we stand, opposite each other. Anabelle’s hands have curled into fists.

“I don’t know because you won’t tell me! Stop treating me like a child!”

I open my mouth to speak, but it doesn’t matter. She’s already left the room. The door slams shut behind her, so hard the window frames shudder.

“I think, perhaps, the princess is right.” Kieran stands. One side of the Ad-hene’s face is lit bright by the screen. It’s showing the mob by the Parliament building again. Patches of fire rise up from the vastness of the crowd. I blink, wonder if I’m seeing things.

I tuck my throbbing palms into my sleeves. “I thought your fire was harmless.”

“Only to those who can handle it,” he says. “The princess has power. It will keep rising whether you show her how to harness it or not.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” I grit my teeth, angry. He wasn’t there, standing in the mud-churned field, surrounded by so much blood and death. He doesn’t know, can’t know, the destruction human magic has wrought.

“Perhaps not. But I know you are afraid.” Kieran places a hand on my shoulder. It’s a deliberate touch this time, the furthest thing from an accident. The prickly feeling blooms in my stomach this time, winds up my spine.

Magic and want and the something else I tried so hard to ignore on the rooftop.

I feel the same way I did in Trafalgar Square—frozen, exposed. Too stunned, too aware to pull away.

“You’re afraid.” He stares straight into my eyes as he says this. The gray of sorrow and storm, vicious and vulnerable all at once. “But you don’t have to be. You feel alone, but you aren’t.”

Another moment passes. The Ad-hene’s hand falls away. He bends down and picks up his unfinished jar of beetroots. “The princess is scared too. You shouldn’t punish her for your own choice. Your own fears. She deserves to know who she is.”

His words smudge inside me, leave marks like charcoal alongside the prickles his touch left. I hate them, wish I could erase them all.

“Go and make things right.” Kieran holds his fork like a knife hilt—all fist and awkward stab. The beetroot looks dark and bleeding as he plucks it from the jar, holds it to his stone lips. “Before someone gets hurt.”

A
quick search tells me that Anabelle isn’t in the house. The front door’s dead bolt is unlocked, and her hoodie is gone from the coatrack. I don’t have enough magic left to follow her aura, but I brave the streets anyway.

My stride is angry. Smarting hands turned fists are shoved into my jacket pockets. Streetlamps pool like halos on the sidewalk. I skirt their light altogether, keep to the shadows.

I leave Kieran behind in the house, but the Ad-hene’s silver-dart words haunt my every step. Knifing my insides with perfect slice and accuracy.

You’re a fire without flame.

You shouldn’t punish the princess for your own choice.

Is it worth his death?

Afraid. Alone. You don’t have to be.

Cut, cut, bleed. Every word hits its mark. Why does the truth hurt so much? What is it about Kieran that makes me question everything?

As much as I hate to admit it, the Ad-hene is right. I can’t shield the princess from the force growing inside her. I can’t bind her with promises she can’t keep.

It’s time to tell her why I’m afraid.

Tree limbs reach like skeleton hands into the night sky. Bony twigs grasping at where the stars should be. They still aren’t out, even in the utter darkness. There are too many lights tonight, too much haze for even the winter constellations to pierce through.

Once I round the corner I find out why.

The fires on the screen, springing up from the crowds. An oil barrel sits in the middle of the street, stuffed full of snapped branches and wads of newspaper. People huddle around it, cheering as a limp, crude effigy is staked into the middle of the barrel.

I’ve seen this tradition before. Every year on the fifth of November the mortals gather around fires with beer and song. Every year they watch the likeness of Guy Fawkes crumble to ash in front of them.

But never in those four hundred years have I seen an effigy with such long, red hair.

I keep to the dark, watch as the first match is struck, tossed into the barrel. People cheer as the paper catches, roars with orange and light. The flames fan and the song
starts. A hum which rises and roars. Just like the fire eating away my likeness.