All That Burns

by Ryan Graudin

  “If I could undo it I would,” I go on. “I’ve just been so confused and Kieran has been saying all these things—”

  “Stop.” Her eyes fly open. Flash out a kaleidoscope of emotions. The ones which are worming out of her grasp as we speak. “Just stop.”

  But I keep going anyway. “Kieran was the one who kissed me. I didn’t—”

  “You think this is all about you. That everything’s about you!” Her voice finally breaks, I hear the sharpness in it. Know it exactly for what it is.

  The jagged edges of a heart broken.

  She’s right. This isn’t about me at all.

  It’s about beetroot flans and twisting Aile flames and nights whispering about hunger and the people they wanted to be. It’s about the too-loud of the princess’s laugh and the too-quiet of her denial. It’s about how the princess’s heart was slipping in tandem with mine—called into orbit by the Ad-hene’s gravity.

  “Oh, Belle . . .”

  I feel the princess’s blood magic stirring, creeping over the bedroom like frost. It settles into my skin, wraps around the many veins and passages of my heart.

  We’ve stepped out of dangerous territory and into a minefield.

  There are creaks and groans, like frozen water breaking. Suddenly I’m seeing snow. It falls around us, dusting our hair, smothering the rug. Coating the green, velvet chair like ash.

  I hold out my palm, catch a flake.

  Not snow. Paint.

  There are cracks in the ceiling. Snaking off of each other, writhing through the heavenly scene. Splitting apart the angels’ sweet faces, prying their smiles wider. Pieces of them fall, chip by chip, down to the earth they’ve watched for so long.

  It’s just paint now. But soon it will be plaster. The cracks will go deeper if Anabelle lets them, bring the roof down.

  “Breathe, Belle. You need to center yourself.”

  “I need you to leave.” Her voice is glacial. Frozen so thick not even a fire could touch it.

  “But what about the dinner? Our plan . . .”

  The flakes keep falling, thicker and thicker. The angels are almost gone, their feathers plucked bare.

  “After the banquet tonight I never want to see you again. Or him.” Her words are like Black Dogs on a lead. Tugging and snapping. Ready to rip.

  The room is so cold it feels like a furnace. Her magic keeps falling, an avalanche threatening to bury us alive. She looks the way she did when she clenched Kieran’s fire in her palms: wild. Unhinged.

  And this time, I can’t extinguish it.

  “Belle, you have to control it. You can’t let it consume you.” But even as I say this I sense it’s too late. I feel her grief: the shards of her heart spinning across the floor. Beyond repair.

  “Get out,” she says with a voice like death. “I won’t ask you again.”

  I can’t move. I can only stand in this room. See the ruin of everything. Feel the weight of chaos inside and out.

  Anabelle takes a lungful of air and howls, “ERIC!! Help!”

  The door bursts open with the fury of a dozen horsemen, but it’s just Eric behind the wood. Sapphire lightning rings his knuckles, ready for anything. Ready for me.

  I slip past him, leave the princess and her shredded angels behind.

  Twenty-Three

  I cannot stay in the palace. I go where I once did when I needed to escape from it all. Underground.

  High Street Kensington Station is unchanged. Full of shiny silver turnstiles and grimy tiles. Yet like everything else in this city it feels dimmer, lesser in the shadow of Richard’s absence. The life which once swarmed its shops and corridors seems muted. People walk with their heads down, eyes scraping the floor. Checking watches or phones, never looking up.

  Which is fortunate, since just after I slipped around the turnstile I felt Kieran’s veiling spell lift. It came as a sudden lightness—like clouds rolling away and letting the sun in again.

  I’m visible, but no one seems to see me. And for now, that’s just the way I want it.

  I find a seat in the last car on the train. The one most commuters avoid. There’s no one in front of me to block my view out the window. The streak of the tunnel as it rips by. Someone has left a pane propped open; cold air ribbons and shrieks through the car.

  With the Ad-hene’s magic gone, my head feels like winter. Cruelly clear. My thoughts crystal sharp.

  Anabelle let her heart slip to Kieran, only to have it shattered. Her magic is a dam, barely holding back chaos. I think of all the cracks in the ceiling, the coldness of her voice, angels tumbling down like snow. I can only hope Kensington Palace is still standing when I return.

  If I return.

  This thought—this doubt—catches me. I have to go back. This is my one and only chance to find Richard’s trail without losing him forever. Without considering Kieran’s offer . . .

  My lips still burn—branded—no matter how many times I wipe my sleeve against them. I think of how close I was to giving in to the swirl of the Ad-hene’s dark mysteries. Kissing him back.

  I catch the girl sitting across from me glaring. Her eyes are like blades—thin, unforgiving. It takes me a moment to realize she’s only a ghost of myself: an echo on the glass.

  I still don’t know the girl in the mirror.

  I’m beginning to think I never will.

  The train starts to slow. White streaks across the midnight glass. At first it’s just a blur, but when the brakes howl louder I catch glimpses of its true form. Serrated letters streaming along the far wall.

  I blink and they’re gone. The platform for Westminster station settles next to the train: sleek metallic walls and digital displays flashing arrival times. The train doors hiss open.

  Runes. Is that what they were? Or was it simply one of the many strands of graffiti which cake the Underground walls?

  There’s only one way to find out.

  I slip out of the doors just as they shnick shut, careful to keep my head turned away from the platform cameras.

  This station is busier than the others. The crowd is hot and excited. Words like ballots and emergency elections buzz out of mouths, echo off the walls. A lot of travelers are clustered into groups, carrying signs with Julian Forsythe’s not-quite-smile splitting across the paper. There must be another M.A.F. protest happening in the world above. Another step in Mordred’s grasp for power.

  I keep my head down and weave through the crowd, all the way to the closest service door. A quick breath of a spell sends me through the locks, down into the tunnels.

  The station’s glow reveals the length of the tracks, littered in trash and swimming with the shadows of rodents. Signal lights wink like predators’ eyes from the edges of the tunnel. I feel as if I’m back in the Labyrinth, with the strangeness of the earth crowding in.

  I think of the digital number which blinked on the platform: 12. Twelve minutes until the next train.

  Sounds swirl like bats through the tunnels: My steps crunch, crunch along the gravel by the tracks. Distant trains thrum and twang. Rats chitter. I scan the walls, trying my best to interpret through the poor light. They’re covered in many things: lichen, the crisscrossing paths of roaches, old maintenance signs, a long-forgotten, peeling advertisement.

  But no runes.

  I keep walking down the tracks. Farther and farther from the light. Until the dark coating the walls is thicker than I can pierce. Even if the runes are here, I can’t see them. I have no light of my own—most of my magic spent on breaking through the locks on the doors.

  I have to turn back.

  A light springs up ahead. My heart stutters with thoughts of a train, a quick death sliced across the tracks. But then I realize it’s far too silvery to be a headlamp.

  “Emrys?” The tunnel warps Kieran’s call, stretches it into something like a question. His scar flares mercury. “What are you doing down here?”

  He draws closer, his silver glisten drenching everything. His face is so still and i
mmovable it looks like a mask in this haunted light.

  “I should ask you the same thing.” I stand rigid by the tracks, still feeling the edged spice of his kiss. It turns my stomach. Reminds me of how much like Guinevere I really am—kissing another’s lips while my king suffers.

  Kieran stops—three long wooden ties away. “I was looking for you. I got worried when my spell slipped. I followed your aura.”

  “Did you know? About Anabelle?”

  There’s a flicker, a movement behind that wall of a face. His voice is brittle and ice. “I did not know she would see. I’m sorry if I caused any discomfort.”

  Discomfort. Such a prim, proper word. So distant from the realities of angels torn from ceilings and a soul scalped raw. So delicate for the collapse I just witnessed.

  “She lost control of her magic,” I say. “She almost brought the palace down on our heads.”

  The Ad-hene stares at his feet. “I had not suspected she would be so angry.”

  The tracks shudder. Somewhere in the tunnel’s far deep a train begins to howl.

  “Angry?” I echo his final word. “Kieran, you broke her heart.”

  He looks up, his eyes wide, swallowing the light. For a glimpse of a moment they appear like silvered glass: transparent, oh-so-breakable. His jaw shuts and his lips go thin.

  The train is drawing closer. It feels like the earth itself is shifting under my feet.

  “We should go,” he says finally.

  Maybe it’s the tightness of the tunnels. Or the heavy growl of the tracks. Or maybe it’s because Kieran has stepped closer, filling all my senses with his brooding face, but my head is buzzing again.

  I think of the runes which cut through my reflection. They should only be a few more steps away. And now there’s more than enough light to see by. I’ve let myself get distracted again.

  I look back at the walls. The Ad-hene’s light stretches on, shows how the tunnel curves round, like some ancient coiling serpent.

  “I think I saw some runes from the train,” I tell him. “They should be just around this bend.”

  Kieran blinks, his lips draw even tighter.

  I turn and start walking again. Follow the iron slant of the tracks which quake under my feet.

  “Do you have a death wish?” His words echo. Loud and hard. “There’s a train coming. You’re walking straight toward it.”

  Crunch, crunch, crunch. I keep walking. Away.

  All of a sudden Kieran jumps in front of me, landing with the grace of the supernatural. As if all those steps I just took brought me nowhere at all.

  “Get out of my way,” I say.

  “Emrys, you have to turn around.” Those gray eyes flash at me. I see the clench of his jaw growing, all rigid sculpt under his powder skin. “It’s not safe.”

  “I’ve faced worse than a train.” I keep walking forward. But he doesn’t move.

  I stop, just a breath away from his skin. His arms are crossed, his scar dimming under the cover of his unmarked flesh.

  “Don’t be foolish,” he says. “Don’t throw your life away.”

  And suddenly I realize this conversation isn’t about finding the runes anymore. Maybe it never was.

  “You said you understood, but you don’t know a thing about love.” I’m screaming now, trying to make myself heard over the train’s growing roar. “Because if you did you’d know why I have to do this. You would know why I could never be with you. . . .”

  Kieran’s face twists, almost as if he’s in pain. There’s a tempest behind his eyes. His arm streaks out—as fast and bright as a fork of lightning—grabs me by the wrist.

  I don’t feel the prickles anymore. It’s anger which swells hot through my veins.

  “Don’t touch me!” My words are all hiss, but that doesn’t stop Kieran’s fingers from wrapping tight.

  The roar is overwhelming now. Pebbles and debris start raining down, so much like Anabelle’s angel dust. The tunnel walls behind the Ad-hene edge with a glow that’s not his. The headlamp of the train is tearing through the earth, straight toward us.

  And—in the moment between moments—I see the runes. Only a few steps ahead: chalked white over the sign of a second service door.

  The Ad-hene flings me across his back like a sack of flour, flashes down the tracks. Away from the runes and the train. Even with all his swiftness we reach the first service door with only seconds to spare.

  We barrel in just as the train sings by: a whiplash of windows, dull steel, and commuters. Kieran’s face is flushed; the gust of the passing cars whips through his curls. I stand with my back tight against the wall. The train is here and gone in the space of seven heartbeats, leaving the tunnel just as hollowed and dark as before.

  It’s not until the rush of its wheels is past that I realize how much I’m shaking. From fear, anger, or both. Adrenaline is thick in my veins, but even with that I know I never could’ve run as fast as Kieran just did. Not in this mortal form.

  “Thank you,” I manage.

  Kieran doesn’t say anything. His eyes are as hard and blank as the tiles he’s staring down.

  “Maybe there is—was—something between us. But it doesn’t matter. It never mattered.” I will not be Guinevere. I will not flip wrong. I will not watch this kingdom burn.

  “I understand.” There’s pain—so base, so primal—in his voice. It catches me off guard, betrays all the stone of his features.

  “Maybe I was never meant to meet Richard. But I did. Maybe I was never meant to be a faagailagh. But I am.” I keep looking past him, into the pitch-black rectangle of the open service door. “Loving Richard has changed me. I’m not who I was before. I’ll never be that Emrys again, even if I did get my magic back. Maybe it’s not who I was made to be, but it’s who I chose to be. And I can’t give that up. I can’t let him go. I won’t.”

  My words are loud, steady, strong. They fly out of the door, into the tunnels and echo back to me. I know they are the truth.

  The life I want more is Richard.

  “Not all of us can be as strong as you,” he says slowly. “Even when it comes to loving someone.”

  After tasting the desperation in Kieran’s kiss I expected more fight out of him, more—anything. But the Ad-hene just stares at the tiles, eyes and face vacant, as if he’s a wax figure on display in Madame Tussauds.

  I try to change the subject. “There were runes back there. Etched straight across a service door, almost like a blocking spell. We should go back and look before the next train.”

  This information seems to bring Kieran to life, at least a bit. He shifts, blocks the way to the door. “No. It’s too dangerous. The runes could be another trap, like the desk. Besides, we know who wrote them.”

  The man who’s somewhere above us. The man who will soon be sitting at Kensington Palace’s banquet table across from Anabelle, hands wrapped around a glass, raising it to his lips.

  “Anabelle still means to go through with the banquet,” I tell him.

  Kieran shuts his eyes. His head pushes against the wall, black curls smoke up and out on the tiles; it looks as though his own dark soul is trying to pull out of his body. “You’re going to let Belle put herself in that danger? Risk her life?”

  “I’m not letting her do anything. I might have been able to talk her out of it before . . .” I let the rest go understood. “But Anabelle wants to do this. And I have to help her.”

  “So you’re not going to reclaim your magic? Even if this plan could get Richard killed?” The guilt—the paper-cut nicks Kieran’s words are so good at—weaves around me. Choke and doubt.

  Is it worth his death? My insides start to gasp.

  And a response, spoken in Richard’s brass bell voice: I don’t need your magic, I need you. It’s what he said to me on the Winfreds’ yacht. Just before I jumped onto the Kelpie. How had I forgotten?

  I will not be Guinevere. I will not abandon my king when he needs me most. If there’s a chance, even a chance I can fin
d Richard without magic . . . I have to take it. “I have to go back to the palace.”

  “If there’s ever a soul I’ve met who can fight fate and win, it’s you, Emrys Léoflic.” The Ad-hene says this with his eyes still closed, his face wrenched tight. If I really wanted to, I could dash past him, back into the tunnels. But Kieran’s right: it could be a trap, and I can’t risk things going badly. Not when we’re only a few hours away from seizing the largest piece to this puzzle.

  I’ve found my course. And now I must stay it.

  Twenty-Four

  Despite my fears, Kensington Palace still stands.

  Yet even if the palace had crumbled to dust, Anabelle’s banquet would go on. The dinner is set up in the Orangery, a slender building off the edge of the garden, where Queen Anne once held many teas and dinners of her own. Its walls are all windows—swallowing the evening light and bathing the room in a hot amber shine, preserving the delicate balance of this moment. Before we slip the drink into Julian Forsythe’s hands.

  Kieran and I are sheathed in his veiling spell, tucked in opposite corners of the room, away from the path of the serving staff. I know Anabelle can see us, but she does everything in her power not to look our way. She watches out the window instead, waiting for guests. As the light outside dims, I can see her face more clearly in the glass. Composed and perfect. In the space of hours Anabelle has pulled together two impossible things: a dinner party this lavish and herself.

  We watch her, waiting for the ice of her expression to slip. For one of the many panes of glass to crack and shatter. But things stay whole. At least on the outside.

  The princess was right: she’s good at controlling things.

  Guests start filing in—names from Anabelle’s small, select list. The only one I recognize is Queen Cecilia, who walks almost hand in hand with Jensen, as if terrified to leave his side.

  And then, the guest of honor.

  The sun is gone by the time Julian Forsythe strides down the gravel path. The only light left comes from the torches which line the way, and the glow of the Orangery’s windows. These catch his eyes, make them electric.