All That Burns (7 page)

I’ve hoped. I’ve believed in the golden age of Camelot—that what happened once can happen again. That human and Fae can exist together. That my past and my future don’t have to be at war.

But Guinevere dreamed that same dream.

I’m standing too close. I think this just as a protestor looks over his shoulder. His eyes carve through the dark, land straight on my lamppost.

I will him to pass by, but there are no more veiling spells left in me. The man stops; recognition glints through his eyes. He calls back to the others with a slapping yell, “Hey! That’s her! She’s the one who spelled the king!”

The air burns with danger. Dozens of stares and lights turn toward me. Root out my hiding place. I’ve never been afraid of mortals before. But there’s something about this crowd which tells me to run.

So I do.

A chunk of the protest breaks away, hounding me with footsteps and yells. I dash down the sidewalk, around the
statue of the warrior queen Boudica in her chariot. The mortals’ lights blaze up behind me. Just ahead I catch a snag of crimson and blue, the edge of an unmoving escalator. An entrance to the Underground.

I swing around, feet skidding against cool asphalt as I head for the sign. I don’t know why I’m running. Why they’re chasing me. Or what they’ll do when they catch me.

My fingers grip hard onto the edge of the escalator. I take the steps in leaps and bounds. Push faster, harder than I’m afraid this mortal body can take. Just as I reach the final step the first torch swings down, fills my world with harsh, terrible light.

I’m trapped.

The Underground’s entrance is shut, laced over with a metal grating. I shake it hard, even though I know it won’t open. My insides feel gutted, but I scream the spell anyway: “
Opena! Opena!
”

Nothing. No magic, no power. Just the cold, hard rattle of the grating. The sound of dozens of feet racing down dead escalators.

“She’s trying to do magic!” someone screams. “Get her!”

The lights are halfway down the stairs, beams stabbing
my eyes. They sweep closer, closer. I brace myself against the grating. Metal diamonds press hard into my back. The meat-voiced man is almost to the last step. Eyes made of flint as he reaches out.

At the last moment I switch and duck. He falls hard into the grating, but there are more hands behind him. More eyes. They flash from all corners.

Someone grabs my dress. I turn to push them away and another hand grips my hair. Too many. There are too many. More hands shove me back into the grating. There are yells everywhere, crowding my ears with anger and hate. But then another sound rises, cuts through them all. A howl. Pure and powerful.

The metal at my back gives way, crumples against the Black Dog’s magic. The creature bursts out of the tunnels, bristling in front of the torches. It’s a massive spirit, too large to squeeze into the space of the escalators, where the crowd is now screaming, clawing their way back up to the streets. It snarls, lichen-yellow teeth gnashing.

That aura. I recognize it. There’s only one Black Dog which scavenges the tunnels near Westminster Bridge.

“Blæc,” I whisper the creature’s name. Its ears prick,
head twists around to where I’m sprawled over the broken gate. Those eyes sear like a nightmare. Yellow and so very hungry.

“How do you know my name?” the creature rumbles.

We’ve met before, Blæc and I. But there’s no point in telling the dog this, since I wiped its memory after the fact. “I am . . . was . . . one of the Frithemaeg.”

“Frithemaeg?” The beast sniffs at the air. Whatever it smells makes it growl. “No . . . Something different. Something tasty.”

Human prey has been scarce in the months of the integration. Most soul feeders have retreated to morgues and funeral homes, living like vultures off the already dead. But some, like Blæc, have stayed in their territories. Slowly starving.

I crawl backward, and the Black Dog edges closer, eyes and teeth fluorescent. Leering like a demon.

A monster.

Maybe the mortals are right.

“Blæc,” I say its name again. “Please.”

“I’m huuuuungrrrry.” The beast’s syllables stretch out in a soft howl, crooning.

The escalator is too far away. There’s no way I’ll make
it without stumbling. Without Blæc’s dagger teeth sinking into my calves.

The Black Dog leans in. Its breath curdles up my nose: hot decay. Saliva strings down, drips against my cheek. I shut my eyes and wait for the dive. The teeth.

It never comes.

The gate rattles under my back as Blæc steps away. A long, low growl leaks through the dog’s teeth, mixed with hints of words. “Can’t . . . not yet . . . won’t let me eat . . . sooooo huuuungrrrry . . .”

I open my eyes just in time to see Blæc’s tail melt back into the shadows of the Underground. I sit still on top of the mangled metal, afraid to move. Afraid this miracle will not hold.

Yet it does. Blæc is gone. The crowd too. All that’s left is a heavy, harsh silence.

It doesn’t make sense. Black Dogs are killers—cold and cruel—not known for sparing prey. Especially when they’re so hungry. For the second time in twenty-four hours, I should be dead.

Richard’s right. I’m not what I was before. My life has become fragile, so easily snuffed. I have to start treating it that way.

My fingers clench hard against my ring.

There’s only one reason I chose this life. Only one person who’s worth it.

It’s time to return to him.

The fire is back. Richard stares straight into the candelabra’s shine—three pinpoints of light dancing in his dark eyes. My legs tremble as I run to the settee. To him. Neither of us says a word as we fold into each other’s arms. I bury my face into his neck, soak in the warm solid of his embrace.

One of the many things I almost lost.

“Emrys, I’m so sorry.” Richard’s apology rumbles through me. His arms tighten. “I
do
care. More than anything. The thought of losing you scares me shitless. But that’s no excuse. I never should’ve asked you to promise those things.”

“I’m sorry, too,” I whisper.

He pulls back, looks at me.

“I d-didn’t . . .” Quiver, shake goes my voice—as undone as the rest of me. I’m glad he doesn’t ask about it, since I don’t think I could bear telling him I almost died. Again. “I didn’t mean those things I said.”

Richard’s hand slides down to mine, weaving our fingers together. “You did.”

“I—”

“You meant some of them,” he says. “And you’re right. You’ve given up so much for my sake and I—I haven’t been there. Not the way you need me to be.”

“Richard—” My throat squeezes.

He goes on, “All this king stuff—it’s getting to me. I’ve been so caught up in trying to lead this country. Trying to keep everything in balance. And I’ve left you behind. Not to mention becoming a first-rate workaholic prat in the process.”

“Second-rate. At the most.” A smile flickers over my lips.

“That’s awfully generous of you.” Richard smiles back: all light. His fingers knot tighter in mine. “Do you want me to give up the crown? Because I will, for you. I could abdicate. Pass the throne to Anabelle. We could find a little cottage in the Highlands. No cameras. No press. Just us. For as long as we wanted.”

At first I think he’s speaking in metaphors: a poet’s language. But then Richard looks at me. The burn of those candles still lingers in his eyes.

He’s dead serious.

I can’t help but imagine it: Waking up late in rumpled sheets. Drinking flasks of Earl Grey on a loch’s stony
shores. All the time in the world to talk, to kiss, to rest. Together.

But I think of Lights-down and the Reforestation Bill. Magic-fusion batteries and looped Faery lights. I think of all our conversations with Queen Titania, imagining new worlds. Resurrecting Camelot.

I think of the poisonous blossom pinched in Julian Forsythe’s fingers. I think of the Labyrinth’s empty cell, its escapee loose in the world: impossible, dangerous, and angry. I think of the marching protestors, their hands tearing at my dress. I think of Blæc’s teeth, how they too almost tore me to shreds. How wide the gap is between these two worlds.

Richard—with the blood magic sleeping in his veins, with his fiery passion, eloquence, and ideas—is the perfect bridge between magic and mortal. The thread holding the kingdom’s future together. No one, not even Anabelle or Titania, could keep things from unraveling if he surrendered the throne.

“The kingdom needs you,” I tell him.

“None of this is worth it, Embers.” He tucks a stray hair behind my ear. “Not if it means losing you.”

My eyes hold Richard’s, dig deep past the royal mask—one he’s worn ever since his father’s death. It fits
so well now that even members of Parliament have a hard time remembering he just turned eighteen. But here in the wavering candlelight he looks young. And tired.

I’m not the only one who’s made sacrifices.

So I offer up four words, small and whispered: “I’m here to stay.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” he murmurs. His fingers keep threading through my hair, forging paths and shivers. “We need some time away, together. Let’s take a holiday after the coronation.”

“Sounds perfect,” I tell him. “I’ll let Titania know she’ll be liaisonless for a few days.”

“Make it a few weeks.” His fingers pause. “Why did Titania call you away? You were just at her court on Wednesday.”

Part of me wants to tell him about the empty cell and Guinevere’s tragic insanity, how it’s poisoned my dreams. But Titania’s order rings clear and true in my head:
Tell him nothing.

As much as I dislike her orders, the Faery queen is right. I can’t unload all these extra worries onto Richard. Not when he’s already awake most nights, pacing halls and carving deeper shadows beneath his eyes.

None of this makes me feel better about lying. “There was a problem with some of the second-stage battery prototypes. The shipment of battery shells wasn’t gutted out well enough before it was sent to court. Every Fae who tried to get near it was crippled with nausea. They summoned me to dispose of it.”

“None of them started going mad, did they?”

I shake my head. “Lights-down is giving them more strength to resist. It won’t be as easy for the older ones to unravel. They’re strong enough to work with metal now.”

“Good.” The king sighs. “We don’t need another insane immortal running about. Especially now.”

Truth lurches high in my gut. I think of the aura staining the walls of the Labyrinth: insane immortal, signed and sealed. I think of how the escapee is running about, probably starting a magical killing spree as we sit here.

Tell him nothing.

I push all of this back down, into the deepest corners of myself. Far from him. “We try to keep our crazy Fae quota to one per year. Preferably less.”

Richard laughs: a warm, sunny sound. “Do you know how much I love you, Embers?”

His touch slides along the angles of my cheeks, my
collarbone. The thrill of him—familiar, yet somehow always new—soaks into every pore. Becomes my light and center in this dark room.

His fingers are knuckle-deep in my hair, and he pulls my face so close I can count each summer freckle still lurking on the bridge of his nose. The flames on the table soak into his eyes, smelt them like copper.

His lips are warm like sunlight, soft like cashmere. They melt into me. The places his lips have been shimmer with cold. Richard’s breath scarves my neck and his kisses trail down, forging new paths all the way to my collarbone. My breaths quicken and my heart is a smithy hammer. Beating hard. Forging new, brilliant things.

Want rises inside me, like the first surge of an unleashed spell. Swelling, aching, and strong. Sparkling within my chest. I grasp at the settee cushions, pull even closer to him.

I rake my fingers through Richard’s hair. A sound rises from his throat: deep, guttural. I start fumbling with the zipper on the back of my shredded dress, just as he goes rigid.

Richard scrambles away from me so fast I nearly tumble onto the floor.

“No.” He’s breathing hard, as if he’s swallowing something back. “Not now.”

I’m blinking, trying to make sense of those few, blunt words. “What’s wrong?”

He shuts his eyes so he doesn’t have to look at me. “I just—can’t.”

My lungs are breathless. A vacuum sucked dry. The sparkle in my chest has vanished; in its place is a low ache.

And I think of the Faery light, how it exploded back to life during our argument. And I remember all those times we kissed, before I gave my powers to Herne. The times Richard left with a bloody lip or sore ribs because my magic ripped through him.

“Are—are you afraid of me?” The question shudders from my lips. “My power is gone, Richard. What happened to that light earlier . . . that was an anomaly. It won’t happen again.”

“No.” Richard stands. He’s turned with his back to me. “It’s not you, Embers. I promise.”

Not me.
His words ring false. Hollow. I hear the fear crammed into every one of his long-strung breaths.

“It’s not you,” he says again, firmer this time. So I know for certain he’s lying. “I’m just—I’m feeling a bit off.”

My fingers work over my sad dress. Its ruined tulle and unraveling flowers. I pick at a loose thread and pull. Watch all of its beauty come undone from a single snag.

Not me. Not me. Not me.

I don’t believe him.

I gave up my spells and magic. I’ve tried to become one of them. But the mortals are still scared of me. Even Richard.

I try to ignore the heavy silence that’s fallen between us.

“Emrys,” Richard murmurs. “You’re hurt.”

I look to him, so beautiful against the darkness. Candle-glow catches crimson against his fingers. The color is wet, bright. Richard studies it hard in the light before he nods down at my arm. I follow his gaze, realize where the red came from.

Guinevere’s mark is still bleeding: a slow, steady ooze. I try to smear the blood away with my fingers, but there’s too much. As if the hurt is fresh and not almost a day old.

“It’s nothing,” I say, even though I know it’s not. From what little I’ve experienced of mortal wounds, I know it shouldn’t still be weeping.