All That Glows (3 page)

“The other one?” I search the dance floor for a glimpse of the pale green dress.

“She’s gone,” Breena assures me. “Nice work in there. I see you haven’t lost your touch. Need another sparkling water?”

I’m about to answer when there’s a commotion at the other end of the bar, where Richard is sitting. I look down to find him pointing at me. For a moment, I doubt my spell’s effectiveness.

“Get that pretty redhead a drink on me!” he shouts at the bartender, and slings his arm over an ecstatic, big-breasted blonde.

I start to breathe again. He’s forgotten all about the Green Woman. And that moment between us. Whatever it was.

Three

T
he prince’s Monday morning starts early. An anxious rap on his bedroom door from one of the butlers wakes him only an hour after sunrise.

“Your Highness?” the staff calls through the crack in the door. “Your father’s here. He wishes to speak with you in the dining room.”

Richard’s curses get caught up in the goose down of his pillow. To my amazement, he manages to twist out of bed and change into a freshly pressed shirt. The only evidence of his eventful weekend are fly-aways in his tawny hair and swollen knuckles. My own head still swims, hungover from the electrical buzz of subwoofers.

“Yes, thank you. I’ll be there in a moment,” Richard says to the door. He’s thrown on his royal demeanor like a well-worn dinner jacket.

His father is in the dining room, just as the butler promised. Even surrounded by gold mirrors and turquoise walls, the king manages to stand out. He sits at the head of the table, owning the seven chair lengths of mahogany stretched in front of him. There’s no food, only a steaming cup by his interlaced hands. I glance over at the king’s guardian. She looks disinterested with Prince Richard’s arrival and barely acknowledges mine with a nod. I have a feeling she’s witnessed this scene before.

King Edward in his anger is an intimidating sight. The dead weight of his stare disrobes me, the invisible witness. Richard, however, seems unaffected. He stands at the side of the table with his arms behind his back and his jaw set.

Slowly, deliberately King Edward spreads a crumpled magazine out on the polished wood. The front-page photograph reveals Richard, drink in hand, dancing.
PRINCE RICHARD UNCENSORED: THE ROYAL’S TRUE COLORS
looms above it in bold, blocky letters.

“‘Prince Richard punched me in the face without provocation,’ one insider reports. His face is deeply bruised from the encounter with the underage royals’ fist. ‘He knocked me out cold in the restroom.’”

Partway through the reading, Richard tucks his hands behind his back, the healthy one covering its damaged partner. I curse myself for not thinking to wipe my attacker’s memory.

King Edward looks up. “Did you attack this man?”

Richard barely glances down at the page. His face remains stiff, unreadable.

“Did you attack him?” his father asks again. There’s a dangerous edge to his voice.

“I—I don’t remember,” the prince says finally. He’s not looking at his father or the magazine. His eyes dance around a nearby vase of flowers: all purple, green, and white, popping beneath the paradise-blue walls. Some of the petals hold crystal-domed dewdrops, fresh from the florist.

For a moment his father is silent. “You don’t remember?”

Almost imperceptibly, Richard gives a small flinch.

“You’re making a fool of yourself, a fool of the crown!” The king’s fist thunders down. His teacup of Earl Grey tips and bleeds its contents across the table. “You aren’t even a week out of Eton and you’re already getting so bloody plastered you can’t remember if you attacked this man or not!”

The prince is a statue, still taking in every minute detail of those flowers.

“You’re a strong spirit—I know that, Richard. Stop wasting what you have and get your arse in gear. How are you ever going to amount to anything if all you do is drink and punch people in the face?” The king’s lip curls with disgust. “Some people think the monarchy is a relic of the past—that it should be done away with. But the nation still needs us, Richard. They need an heir they can depend on. Someone they can relate to. When I was your age, I was planning to travel the world for my gap year—to get an idea of what’s out there. To culture myself! And you? You haven’t even planned one! I’ll go to hell and back before I let you spend twelve months pissing in the corner of some pub.”

King Edward’s streamline face, so much like his son’s, flushes from pink to crimson with the effort of his speech. The rage in his aura builds with the power of an oncoming wave. The room grows hot with it.

“Do you have anything to say?” He relents, once the breath wheezes out of him. “Anything at all.”

Without a word, Richard turns and walks out the door. I have no choice but to follow, leaving the king to his crumpled magazine and spilled cup of morning tea.

It isn’t until Richard is far from his father that the emotions begin to bubble up, a scalding boil. He walks quickly, furiously, like a sentinel ordered to march double-time. He wanders the same corridors twice, making anxious loops past the paintings of long-dead men suspended along Kensington Palace’s grand hallways. By his third circuit, he escapes to the gardens. It’s here beside an orangey sea of marigolds that he kneels down.

“I’m sorry.” I sit next to the prince. “I should’ve erased his memory too.”

The words don’t make me feel any better. They can’t take back the red of his father’s rage or those sharp, flinty words.

The prince straightens; air, crackling and static, fills his lungs. Bright pink lines his eyes. Part of me wilts at the sight.

Richard’s head turns slowly, clearly in my direction. For a moment, I forget he cannot see.

“You sense me, don’t you?” My whisper grows even quieter as I double-check the veiling spell. It’s as strong as it’s always been, keeping our worlds an unknowable distance apart.

He shifts and I start, realizing exactly how close I’d sat next to him. Closer than a watching Fae should.

The crunching of gravel causes both of us to look up. It’s Princess Anabelle, Richard’s younger sister. Her straw-colored curls, round and soft like a china doll’s, almost fall apart from the briskness of her march. The rest of her is just as preened. Penciled eyes and lips. A dash of powder to bring life to her cheeks. At sixteen, the princess looks as pieced together as the portraits of her forebears.

Helene trails her at an acceptable distance. The distance a Fae should keep from her royal. I swallow, trying to ignore the guilt that’s joined the rumblings of my still-tender insides.

“Hey.” Anabelle kneels beside her brother, still managing to look all grace in her heels and pencil skirt. “Are you okay?”

Richard clears his throat. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”

But his sister presses. “I heard the yelling. What happened?”

The prince, so rigid in the face of his father’s fury, breaks beneath her question. “I don’t know. That’s the problem.”

“Another blackout?” A frown lurks on the edge of Anabelle’s pearly-rose lips, but she has enough control to hide it.

“I didn’t drink that much. I swear . . .” Richard sighs. “Some guy told the tabloids I attacked him.”

“And you believed it? Richard, it’s a bloody
tabloid
!” The princess pats her brother’s back and I notice even her nails are white-tipped and perfect. “I’m sure nothing happened.”

“I woke up with this.” Richard holds out his hand, so swollen I can no longer make out the bony ridges and valleys of his knuckles.

A look close to admiration crosses his sister’s face as she inspects the injury. “Well, you must have had one hell of a good reason to hit him.”

The prince laughs. There’s no humor in the sound. “I’m a mess, aren’t I, Belle?”

Anabelle places his injured hand back on his knee. “We all are. You just have a special knack for showing it.”

“It’s not like you could do anything wrong. Not in Dad’s eyes anyway. You could run naked through the streets and he’d still think you were blooming perfect.”

“Probably an exaggeration,” his sister points out. “You know, the only reason he’s so hard on you is because he loves you. He’s worried about you.

“Dad does have a point though,” the princess’s voice plummets into a whisper, even though everything around them—the paths, the flower beds—is empty. “People are watching us, Richard. You and me. We’re a symbol of something whether we want to be or not. Sooner or later you’re going to have to start living up to that.”

Richard’s only response a long, leaden sigh. Like the sound of a sleeping bear poked into drowsiness.

“I think you should apologize to Dad.”

“What?” The prince starts. “Belle, I didn’t
do
anything! I told you, it was a blackout!”

“Maybe not, but you still put yourself in that position. The only way Dad is ever going to trust you is if you take the first step and show some initiative.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong!” Richard’s cheeks mottle red and peach. “I was just having some fun with my friends like anyone else!”

“But we
aren’t
just anyone else,” the princess insists. “We have responsibilities.”

Richard breaks in. “Who made you such a guiding light anyway? You don’t have to pretend to be Mum. She does her own job well enough.”

“I—I’m just trying to help,” Anabelle says, the hurt clear in her earth-shaded eyes.

“I don’t need your help right now, Belle. I need to be alone. I have to work this out myself.” The prince rakes his hands through his hair and tugs at the back of his neck. As if the motions will rid him of his sister’s words. “Go. Please.”

“Fine,” she says, all terseness. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you. Things have to change soon, Richard. You can’t keep doing this to Dad and Mum.”

Richard stares at the gravel. His eyes stay locked on the small, sharp rocks. When his sister is completely out of sight he kicks at the path, sending a rattling spray of stones into the opposite flower bed. They rain on innocent petals, fast and spitting, like shrapnel.

“What’s wrong with me?” He looks down at his knuckles, at the hand he bruised protecting me. The edges of his dark lashes glisten, brimming with too much emotion.

I should be sitting by the flower bed, dodging those pebbles. I should just accept my blame in this and move on. I should wait for the next Fae to relieve my shift, so I can go ride the Underground and clear my head.

Instead I touch him.

It’s nothing significant, just the barest trace of my finger on his shoulder. The act is so sudden, so impulsive and not me, that I don’t realize what I’ve done until the prince reacts. He jerks back like a man burned, eyes darting faster than a spooked horse until they focus on where I’m sitting.

“Who—who are you?” he asks, his stare vague. “How’d you get in here?”

He sees me. It’s not possible. The veiling spell . . . somehow, my magic has failed.

I’m like a hare, frozen by the headlamps of an approaching vehicle. My mind dashes in hundreds of directions, but I can’t seem to make myself actually move.

“Where did you come from?” Richard’s eyebrows dive together. His thoughts are churning, playing out on every corner of his face, trying their best to reconcile my sudden appearance.

I should wipe his memory, cause another blackout. The spell is simple; one I’ve formed thousands of times. It should be little more than a reflex to take the past minute out of his head.

But I can’t make myself say the word.

“I—I have to go,” I mutter as I stand.

“What? Wait!” The prince reaches out his hand. His fingers brush mine—warm, tingling.

I turn and run.

High Street Kensington station swarms with humanity. Women whose arms are loaded with shopping bags, hooded teenagers talking into their mobiles, and men with briefcases all rush past. They’re unaware of the world around them, focused on getting home.

I get on the first train that rushes to the platform. The car is nearly full—I fight to wedge myself through the steel doors. More than a few times I feel like gagging. The train is all metal, sweat, and body heat, grinding wheels on a track. . . . Everything the magic inside me hates. Writhes against.

But the train is underground, a grace that is more than saving. The countless meters of earth above and around us feed my spirit. It doesn’t matter that I’m sitting in a metal tube, barreling through the tunnels. As long as I’m here, my magic will replenish.

I don’t remember which Fae first thought to ride the trains. More than likely it was one of the younglings—the ones whose stomachs were closer to steel themselves. The ones who weren’t horrified when engineers started carving out tunnels of our precious earth for the trains to burrow through. We all use it now.

The train is far from central London by the time I finally get a seat. I pay little attention to the names of each stop as we plow farther into the city’s outskirts. I let my head rest against the rattling window. Wind through the cracks and the lullaby hush of the tracks help calm my stomach.

But the thought, the full weight of what I’ve just done, still makes me want to wretch.

I revealed myself to a mortal—to Britain’s prince—and instead of wiping his memory, I ran. I broke the barrier between magic and mortal. And I didn’t fix it.

Richard isn’t what I’d expected. Not at all. I went into my first shift ready to wrangle an uncontrollable party animal. Instead I found a young man who, despite his better judgment, was brave enough to defend me. Someone who wasn’t afraid of me or the power I displayed.

Something about Richard is different from the others I’ve guarded. Something connects us: something dangerous and electric.

And I don’t know why.

Urgent needles dig into the back of my neck, and all of these baffling thoughts flee my mind’s center stage. The aura is both unsettling and hard to find. The train car is still crammed tight with bodies, wedged side by side in their seats or clutching the bright blue hand poles. All of the mortals are swallowed in their own little electronic worlds: music players, screens with words and moving pictures, conversations with people who are miles away. Not one of them sees the huntress.