All That Glows (34 page)

Richard jerks. He’s received my warning.

“I won’t let you kill them, I can’t.”

Her laugh slides like a serpent through the raindrops, cruel and cold. “And what, little youngling, do you think you can do to me? Your magic is paltry. Nothing.” Mab spits the words.

I try not to think of how right she is as I brace myself.

“If only you’d had a chance to grow. Such a pity. You had real promise.”

Mab’s first whispered curse lashes out like a bullwhip. The light of my shield shatters, pours down to the ground in a thousand useless pieces. I feel Anabelle cringe behind me, trying to grow smaller. I steal a glance at Richard. His hazel eyes are set, his jaw locked, determined. He clutches something at his side. I can’t get a clear look at it.

As soon as the shield fails, I cast a counterspell. Mab swats it aside with ease, growling at the pain of her still-bleeding shoulder. Another curse hisses out of her, poisons the air of the glade. I face the spell full on. It stops, just barely, under my resistance.

“Lie down and I promise I’ll give you an easy death,” she mocks.

I’d counted on the sickness to gut her away from the inside, but it’s not working fast enough. Mab is still stronger and she knows it. Until now she’s been playing, a cat batting about a scrabbling, defiant mouse. As soon as she wants to get serious, we’re all dead.

I know what I have to do: go for the cat’s throat.

As soon as I jump forward, you and Anabelle have to run. Understand?
I tense, fill myself with everlasting breath.
I love you, Richard. Never forget that.

Mab is preparing another spell when I lunge, throwing myself at the side opposite her wounded shoulder. She has no time to raise her gimp arm. We fall into the withered leaves, her spell unfinished. Somewhere through the drumming rain and sizzling of magic, I hear the royals’ footsteps, slogging and frantic. I have to hold Mab off long enough—give them time to escape.

Although Mab’s stunned, she’s quick to react. Magic lights her skin, making it acidic to touch. I push through the blinding pain, dig my blazing fingers into her wounded shoulder. Even with Breena’s spell, the arrow’s hole has almost closed. I shove through the clotting blood.

Her shriek is worse than a Banshee’s. Something bursts inside my left ear, but I keep ripping, digging, tearing. Desecrating the human body Mab loves too much to leave. The beauty she clings to, the physicality she forced on us, is my last weapon. My only, final hope is to damage this vessel so severely that the royals will be far off when she kills me.

“We’ve had our turn, Mab.” My scream rises above hers, climbs endlessly through this cathedral of trees and rain. “We’ve drunk so deeply of life that we’ve forgotten what it means. Death is inevitable.”

Mab’s good arm swings up. Flaring, chalky skin torches my face, making my world white with anguish. For a moment, I wonder if death has finally struck, but then I feel the blood and tendons beneath my fingers.

My work isn’t done.

She screams, strikes me again. This blow is harder, filled with sinister magic. I land face-first into the moldy foliage. My vision is still blurry—a hazy, unfinished puzzle. I scramble through mud and leaves, sliding toward the closest tree.

Somewhere behind me, Mab growls against the pain. The earth wrinkles with sounds as she picks herself up and crawls toward me.

I wrap my arms around the tree, skin digging hard into its scaly bark. There’s no Dryad here to comfort me, only rough wood and emptiness. I try to think of Richard instead of the terror rising up, pure and paralyzing.

“How could you love him?” Mab rasps. She knows she’s winning or she wouldn’t have wasted her words.

I let go of the tree and turn. The queen stands, a mess of silver, white, and blood against my poor sight. She’s a fallen star in the wood’s womb-like dark. Alien bright.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Don’t patronize me.” Mab shuffles closer, her features sharpening beneath my gaze. Years of suppressed emotions mottle her face, rot her like the Green Women. “I’ve seen it all before. The loss of reason, the stupid sacrifice of magic, the heartache. Just like Guinevere and the others . . . Loving a mortal only brings suffering. Even if you did end up with His Highness and get everything you wanted, what did you think would happen? What’s your ending?”

My throat catches. Something about the forest behind Mab isn’t right. We aren’t alone.

“I can’t live without him,” I say, pushing through the thickness in my throat. Breena’s broken body lies in the edges of my clearing vision. The sight of it brings pain, searing and deep. Mab killed one of the only things that might have made me stay.

“Then you won’t live.” Mab’s high, hysterical voice plummets into icebound malice.

Something flashes in the darkness—not a spell, but Mab’s own pallid light reflected back on her. The long, narrow mirror of a blade comes down, bursts through the Faery queen’s stomach. Blood, bright and fresh, cracks like a spiderweb across her bodice. The queen gasps when it pulls out of her. Her spell, half spun, runs back through the sword.

Richard falls with a silence far more horrible than any scream. His hair blends into the ground’s mush of mud and decay, his mouth gaping wide from Mab’s caustic magic.

“No!”
No! Not him. Not him.

I dive into the leaves next to Richard, press against his warmth. The blue of cold and shock creeps over his face; his lips lined with red that should be on the inside. But the spell didn’t tear all life away. There’s a flutter deep within him, fainter than the beat of a butterfly’s wing.

“Live!” I wrap an arm around his chest, trying to feel the extent of the damage.

He gasps at my word—a wretched sound, filled with pain. I can tell, just by this one noise, that I’m losing him.

“Just hold on, Richard. I’ll fix you!” I sit up and look around, frantic, for anything that might help. All I see is Mab, shuddering a few meters away. The sword has only damaged her, its wound already healing. It will take a strong spell to break a spirit as old as her, magic that’s beyond my strength.

“Embers.” Richard’s rasp brings me back. His eyelids flicker. He’s struggling to stay with me.

I push the hair out of his face. Raindrops mixed with his sweat slick down my palm. “You have to stay with me. I can’t lose you now.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” He tries to smile, but it’s too much. The curl of his lips withers, like it was never even there.

I lean even closer to him. Our lips touch. His are motionless. I press gently into them, grabbing desperately for any signs of life. His pulse quivers beneath paper-thin skin. Beat by beat, it’s slowing.

Then I taste the blood, sanguine and hot, reaching into me with a slow, salty burn. My lips, my mouth, everything is on fire. Magic. Magic that isn’t mine or Mab’s. An old force, rusty but powerful, now inside me.

I pull away from him, wiping my wrist against my lips. It comes away, smeared with a thin film of Richard’s blood. Mab got what she wanted. I tremble, let my hands fall. With all the crown’s magic before me, I can do nothing but cry.

Something moves. My heart jerks, certain that it’s one of Richard’s limbs calling me back to him. Instead my eyes lock onto Mab. Her stomach wound has healed enough for her to crawl across the forest floor. Inch by inch, she’s heading toward Richard. I arch over his body like a rabid animal. The queen sees the wildness in my stare and blinks.

“Give it up, Emrys. He’s gone. At least make his death worth something, let me take his blood. . . .” She reaches out, her hand gnarled and wanting.

Anger and something much more profound surges through me. Power that isn’t mine—Richard’s blood right—mixes with my magic. It shoots through my veins like a special fire, waiting to be lit for centuries.

“I won’t let you kill the others too.” I seize control of my shaky limbs and start composing the spell.

Mab sees the curse weaving together, piece by piece. She sees her own doom rising before her.

“Think of all the years I loved and protected you,” she grovels, eyes desperate with horror. They’re clear now, blue as Breena’s were. “I was the one who taught you, who made you what you are.”

I say nothing, all of my attention trapped inside this spell. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever created before, with a hundred more intricacies than the one that destroyed the Banshee. I knit it together, looping all of the stitches into place.

“Those days are clearly over,” I say, all emotion drained out of my voice. Finally the spell is ready. I hold it between two palms—a horrible, beautiful thing, flames glinting with the transience of opals.

“Mercy . . .” The word comes out in a pitiful whimper.

“Sometimes justice
is
mercy.”

I look straight into her stare and let the spell fall. It peels at the Faery queen, like a knife paring an apple down to its core. I refuse to look away, even when the strips of flesh fall from her bones. Her eyes stay on me, phasing through every color, constant in their hatred and pain. I stare back until they’re gone, swept away with everything else. Nothing is left. Not even dust.

The curse’s light dies, plunging the clearing into darkness. I bend close to the ground feeling for Richard’s arm. My fingers find his. They’re strangely cool, unwelcoming. He’s beyond my magic now.

I find his side and fit myself against it. There’s no light heaving of his chest, no warmth or softness to press against. I lay there, staring past shadows and raindrops into the space beyond. Death is overwhelming in this clearing. It pins me down against the leaves, holds me hostage. With all my heart I want to join it, but I can’t even find the strength to move.

Thirty-Three

I
’ve never woken up before. It’s one of the simple facts of a spirit’s existence. We don’t sleep. We don’t need to: magic gives us all the energy we need.

But when I stared so blankly into the darkness, I left myself. I can’t say how. Maybe it was the grief or the shock of the blood magic. Whatever it was, I was gone, lost for hours.

Something, someone is shaking me. Light forces through the cracks in my eyes. My body feels stiff, old, as if all of the years I’ve lived have finally passed through it. I sit up from the damp leaves and look around, my neck robotic and slow.

Morning—the clearing is bright and blue with it. The ground oozes wet with last night’s storm. Gashes of movement scar the drying mud, leaves splay everywhere.

“Emrys!” The princess is next to me, her hair mussed and golden like a lion’s mane. Bright, angry pink lines her eyes, framed by the old smear of coal-black makeup. “Emrys, wake up!”

Breena’s body is haunting in its closeness. I can’t not look at it, angled and sprawled like a broken marionette. The sight makes my insides hollow, drained like a cracked egg.

“What happened? Where’s Richard? Is he hurt?” Anabelle looks as unstrung and desperate as I feel. “I lost him when I was running through the woods and I thought he might come back here. . . .”

Something explodes, sharp and hot, inside my chest as memories of the night before rush back. Heartbreak all over again. I look away from Breena’s broken corpse and steel myself for what’s beside me. My hand goes out to touch him, but it falls into slimy ground.

Richard is gone. Stolen. There’s a slight imprint in the earth where he lay next to me, so rigid, so cold. Mab’s cronies must have arrived during my trance and taken it.

“No. No, no, no,” I sob, bringing my fist down into the rotting leaves. After all this, they still got Richard. They wrenched away our last moment together.

Anabelle stares into the mess of mud and mulch beside me. Her face is crypt white—tattooed with fear. “What happened?”

I look around the clearing, scanning for anything that can get me back to him. Last night’s footprints are everywhere, littered and preserved in claylike ground.

Anabelle’s hands snag my shoulders, firm and determined. I find myself looking into her eyes. They’re the color of earth. “Emrys, where’s my brother?”

My head buzzes with truth I can’t make myself speak.
Dead. Richard is dead. I failed. I lost him.

“So, you’re both alive.” The sudden, gruff voice makes my body jerk.

Herne slips out of the trees, composed of shade and gloom even under glaring daylight. He looks smaller after the battle, all of his terrible energy released on some poor souls.

“It was her all along then?” His citrine eyes pick out the spot where Mab fell. He’s reading the spells, piecing together everything that happened. “Wouldn’t have guessed it. That’s why I tend to stay out of these affairs. Never know who to trust.”

“Have—have you seen the king’s body?” I manage. “It’s gone. I’m afraid it’s been stolen.”

Anabelle’s cry is desolate, filled with terrible knowledge and loss. It shatters what’s left of my heart.

“Body?” Herne steps closer, studies Richard’s shallow casting in the leaves. “The king is dead?”

I nod, fighting hard against the sobs that try to claw their way out of me. I can’t even bear to look over at Anabelle. “Mab’s magic tore him inside out. No mortal could survive that.”

Herne kneels down to touch the earth. One by one, leaves fall back, tattered and brown, through his gloved fingers. “Tell me. How did you manage to kill the Old One? You’re far too young to manage such a thing on your own.”

“Richard stabbed her and I finished her off.” I don’t want to think back on those last moments. Not now. Spare the princess those last, awful details. Her crying is mewling and awful. It scratches at my back like a pitifully angered kitten.

“There was something else. Something old,” Herne says, and brushes the last of the vegetation off his hands.

“Something happened—” My throat collapses. I can’t find the will to get past the choking.

Herne walks over to Mab’s other victim. The body they left.

From here I can see Breena’s fragile sketch of a face. Even in death she clings to her beauty. Her hair springs around porcelain skin like a crown; eyes glazed in a mysterious, knowing way. There’s no fear in them, no terror at the emptiness. Only peace.