All That Burns (30 page)

Click.

The final piece of the puzzle falls into place.

Richard never left the city. Trafalgar Square swallowed him and his kidnappers like quicksand. That’s why no one saw him being taken. There was nothing to see. Just the spin of a manhole—lost in all the chaos of Blæc’s bloodbath.

Richard is here, underground.

For the first time in a long time my chest jars with a feeling which isn’t doom or burning or loss. I’m slung like a spring lamb over this Ad-hene’s broad shoulders, probably being taken to my slaughter. I have no reason to hope, but that doesn’t make my heart thrill any less.

I’m going to see Richard again.

The Ad-hene move as one. They flow—cobra swift—through tunnels, through hatches, through halls, down stairs, down holes, over pipes, over tracks. Through layers and centuries of cramped humanity. The one who carries me runs without jarring. A stale wind rakes my
hair, plasters its black strands into my face. I only glimpse flashes of London’s vast underbelly through it, images skating along the silver rays of the Ad-hene’s scars. Tiled walls, a Roman-era well, a tribe of brown rats, a brick archway from Victorian times, train tracks so long out of use they’re coated with moss.

And runes. Everywhere runes.

They’re scrawled in odd places: on the rungs of ladders, the backsides of iron hatches, above arches like mistletoe. Always the same string of symbols. The same spell from the manhole cover and the service door.

After what seems an eternity, the river of Ad-hene slows, becomes a trickle. I’m slung to the ground, facing Alistair again, and behind him, a steel door. The paint on it is peeling, old and neglected.

“She’s using you,” I say over Alistair’s shoulder as he opens the door. “Look at what you’re doing. Opening cell doors, guiding prisoners. Just like before. Morgaine has made this place a prison! Just like Mab.”

More dark yawns past the open door. Alistair turns. “This is no prison,
faagailagh.
It is your tomb.”

“Do you think Morgaine is just going to hand you these tunnels?” I think of the vastness of London’s underground network, how it reaches up into every building,
delves deep into every secret. How many things move unnoticed by the world above.

“She already has. Now that Kieran has fulfilled our bargain, I can loop this labyrinth with my own magic,” Alistair informs me. “Even Lady le Fay will not be able navigate these tunnels without us.”

“But her runes are everywhere,” I say.

“Morgaine marked out our tunnels before we arrived. They’re blocking spells to cleanse our territory of common mortals. Just as you thought.” Kieran speaks from behind me. And I remember how eager he was to keep me from going back to study the runes on the service door. I’d been so close to the truth.

“Now go.” Alistair—the oldest Ad-hene of all, father of labyrinths—sweeps his arm into the dark. “Die the death you chose.”

I look over the chorus of faces, lit and somber like mourners at a candle vigil. My eyes catch Kieran’s. Finally. Finally! His face doesn’t flinch. His eyes don’t shine. I stare and stare. I want to haunt him. But his expression remains like all the others. Blank. He is only one of sixteen pale bodies, surrounding me like a half-moon, pressing in, leaving no room to run. I have no way to go but forward.

I walk on, stay my course. All the way into the dark.

The door clangs shut. Sealing off every glimmer of the Ad-hene’s scars. Leaving me wrapped in underground darkness: an absolute black, all claw and dazzle.

A lock grinds into place behind me, though I don’t know why they bothered. I’m not sure I could find the door again. The darkness is too thick, too stifling. Everything has closed in on me—pulled tight. Yet the room I’m standing in must be large. There are noises from great distances. Drips. Clicks. Breathing . . .

My heart stops. I stand perfectly still. Listen.

Nothing. Was it just my own breath circling back to me? The darkness taking on a soul of its own?

And then—a footstep. A scuff of sole against a concrete floor.

“Richard?” My call trails off, gets tangled up in the dark. “Is that you?”

The steps stop. They’re close. So close.

“Embers?” His whisper is barely there, wrapped up in shrouds of disbelief. “You’re here. . . .”

“Where are you?” I reach out through the black.

“By the wall . . .” He pauses, as if just now realizing the darkness we’re in. “Follow my voice.”

He keeps calling to me, in that warm, summertime
way of his:
Embers
,
Embers
,
Embers
. With every new syllable I take a step forward. Draw closer to the rich toffee smooth of his voice. Closer, closer, closer.

Here.

My fingers find something even warmer and softer than Richard’s voice. His hand. Our skin meets, almost electric. I pull completely into his touch. His arms fold over my shoulders. We stay like this for a long time, clutching each other like lifelines.

“You’re here,” he whispers again.

I want to say something, but there’s so much feeling in my throat. Swelling, choking out any explanations. All I can do is breathe in, press my face into his neck.

I found him. I lost him, but I found him again.

“Richard . . . ,” I finally manage.

His hand hushes back around my shoulder, dances like feathers through my hair. “You really cut it. The dreams were real. . . .”

“I don’t know how—” I start to say.

“Can you make a light? I want to see you.”

A light. Of course. I had one this whole time.

“Inlíhte.”
At my whisper our world flares to life. With Richard at its center. Suddenly I’m glad I didn’t try to fight Morgaine or the Ad-hene, that I didn’t steal any of
the light now wrapping around Richard’s face. There’s so little of it: a flash and a long, agonizing dimming.

We gaze at each other through the watery rays of my Faery light. Trying to capture and preserve these new images of ourselves. As we are. Richard looks much as he did in the dream: hair tousled, face thinning and covered in scruff, eyes red-rimmed: tired without the bleariness. Their stare is all focus, drinking me in. The hand which hovered by my jaw brushes back into my hair.

“I didn’t want to change it.” My voice wavers, just like my spell. “I had to. I loved the red. And I know you did too. I had to do it—”

I’m sobbing now. I know it’s not about the hair. It’s about every impossible choice I’ve been faced with since he was torn from my arms. It’s about the death I’ve brought down upon our heads.

We’re standing in a tomb. I can see that now as I try to wipe the tears from my face, finally look away from Richard. The walls around us are grimy white tile, the room itself filled with ladders and machines. Runecraft winds tight around bricks and pipes. Far too cramped and complicated to erase, even if I did have my old magic.

It’s not hard to guess what spell they will unleash. And when.

Tonight when midnight strikes the Palace of Westminster will collapse into flames. King Richard’s body will be found underneath the rubble and yours with it.

We must be somewhere in the Palace of Westminster’s basement. I look around frantically for an exit, but all I can see is the steel door Alistair locked. Slowly my light fades. And my magic with it. I don’t have the strength to open the door. All because I wanted a glimpse of Richard’s face. My last glimpse.

We’re going to die. In a few short hours Morgaine’s runes will eat their way through these walls with flare and fire. The stones will collapse and swallow us whole. Because I chose it.

I’ve buried us alive.

“I don’t care what color your hair is,” Richard says softly.

The tears come harder, after the smile which breaks across his face. I can barely see it. My Faery light is just a shimmer now, the size of a firefly. Darkness collapses back on us.

My fingers dig into him, holding on.

“She’s going to kill us,” I hear myself saying. “Elaine Forsythe. She’s really Morgaine le Fay—a sorceress from Camelot—and she’s going to kill us to rig the elections
and take control of Britain.”

“What are you talking about?” Richard asks.

“I thought it was Mordred,” I go on, unable to stop the avalanche of words and tears, “because of the dreams Guinevere was sending. The ones you were in. But I wasn’t paying enough attention. I wasn’t listening.”

“Dreams? Guinevere?” Richard’s arms stay wrapped around my shoulders. The only thing left holding me together. “Emrys, slow down. Start from the beginning.”

My story pours out. I start with that night on the yacht and tell him everything: about the Labyrinth of Man, Guinevere’s curse, Herne’s offer, Titania’s abandonment, his sister’s courage, the effigies the bonfires ate, Blæc’s ashes, the circle of runes cuffing Julian Forsythe’s wrist, Kieran’s lips crushed against mine, the magic Anabelle used to tear Kensington’s angels from their heights.

I’m hoarse by the time I tell him what happened in the garden. The path I chose for both of us.

And after this: a long silence. I wish I could still see Richard’s face. At least his arms haven’t pulled away.

“I’m sorry,” I say, when the quiet becomes too much.

“Why?”

“All of this is my fault. Guinevere tried to warn me, and I could have stopped it. I could have taken back my
magic and protected you . . . but I didn’t. I didn’t have the courage to let you go.” I hold him tighter as I say this, my arms looped firm around his waist. “I failed you. I chose this.”

“Is that what you think?” he asks slowly. “That you’ve failed me?”

Richard’s heartbeat is steady. A constant
bum, bum, beat, beat
metronome.

“Do you know why I fell in love with you?” he asks. “It wasn’t because you protected me, or because you could use magic. It wasn’t because of your red hair. It’s because you saw every part of me—the good and the bad, the rotten and the ripe. You saw me and you didn’t give up. You decided to stay.

“You didn’t choose this,” he says. “You chose me,
us
. Again. And I’m so, so glad for it.

“Also, I think it goes without saying that I’d rather not be a witch’s puppet,” he adds.

“The lochside retreat was tempting. But the collapse of the Palace of Westminster seemed like too much to miss. Plus I’m not much of a tattoo girl.”

“I don’t know. With that new hair?” I can practically hear the grin on his face. “I definitely think you could pull off some ink.”

“Right,” I say. “Well, as soon as we get out of here it’s straight to the tattoo parlor. I’ll get a heart with
H.R.H. King Richard
stamped on my arse.”

He laughs, as clean and clear as church bells. How long has it been since I’ve heard that sound? Such lightness in his voice which hasn’t been there since before the integration . . .

Here we are, about to get crushed flat, and he’s laughing. We’re shivering and wrapped in dark, but we’re finally together with time for just us. These might be our last moments, but they’re ours.

We must make the most of them.

He pulls me even closer. His heart is beating harder now, tapping like some edgy drum solo. It reminds me of the music we danced to, so long ago.

His lips find mine. Or mine find his. There’s no telling how they meet, but they do. It’s a gentle kiss at first: the softness of heather blooms, the barest glow of dawn’s east edge. It takes me back to the night we walked together in Hyde Park, when the nightingales’ song threaded through the colors of the sunset and Richard kissed me. The night it all began.

Sunrises. Sunsets. Beginnings and ends. Who knew they could be so much alike?

This kiss is so different from Kieran’s. There’s no thrash and rage. No heaving, raw hunger. It’s steady and true and fearless—like the beat of Richard’s heart. Like his love for me.

There’s no wild spin, but there is a depth to the way he kisses me. A sweet swim through hair and skin as we reach for each other. And I’m diving—down, down, down—into his touch. Pulling into his warmth.

But there’s something else. Not a pull, but a blooming. A rising . . .

Every hair on my body stands on end. An unmistakable feeling rushes through my veins, bursts forth.

The room is all light. Bright, bright white, burning with a power which returns the tears to my eyes. I blink them back. See Richard. He’s blinking too, his face made of color and life. His eyes shine like a spell, full of stun as he looks at me. Then above us.

I follow his gaze. To the Faery light which hovers over our heads. My
inlíhte
—the spell I thought was dead and gone—is suspended above us like a miniature sun. Stronger than it ever was before.

Its blaze rushes through every fiber of my being—magic. But it feels nothing like my old Faery powers. What dances inside me now feels more like the veiling
spells Anabelle wove so well on the rooftop.

Blood magic.

And I remember the last time I cast a Faery light—during Lights-down. The night we fought and my
inlíhte
exploded with anger. It hadn’t been
my
anger the Faery light flared against. It was Richard’s emotions . . . his blood magic pulsing, somehow feeding my spell.

Richard lets out a breath that’s been held a long, long time. It weighs of weeks and worries. “It didn’t hurt you.”

“Hurt me?” I think of the fear which shone so feral behind his eyes, that night he pulled away and said
it wasn’t me
and I knew for certain he was lying.

Except he wasn’t.

“It’s been getting stronger ever since Lights-down started.” He looks back down at me. “Every time we were together, every time we kissed, I felt it rising. I was afraid it would hurt you, the way your spells used to hurt me when we kissed. I was afraid that after everything you gave up, we still couldn’t be together. The thought of losing you—I just couldn’t bear it. So I fell back into old habits, tried to run away from the problem. Ignore it.”

“That’s why you were afraid? That’s why you pulled away? Because you thought the blood magic would hurt me?” A laugh bubbles up in my throat, so full of relief
and love for him. “Richard, I was made to carry magic. Meant for it.”