by Ryan Graudin
Anabelle should be running. Fleeing at the sight of those black marks. Instead she’s just sitting with her hands folded over the button-down cardigan in her lap. Her eyes focus intently on the television as flames bloom across its screen. Watching destruction play out in slow motion. Stones collapse into themselves, as if the proud breath the building held for centuries has finally leaked out.
“I don’t believe it . . . ,” Anabelle whispers at the screen, burrows her hands deep into the discarded jumper.
“Don’t worry. You’re safe here. Underground.”
“Why would she do something like this?” The princess’s voice is fuzzy and pulled long, like a patient going under for surgery.
I step farther into the room. Richard glides next to me, grim-faced as he watches the sorceress with his sister.
Frithemaeg drift through the walls, take their places along the room’s perimeter. Queen Titania plants herself by the television and its looping shots of Parliament’s fiery death.
Morgaine doesn’t look up. All of her attentions are on Anabelle. “She was a Fae. In my day it was well known never to strike a deal with a Faery. They always have a hidden agenda.”
“I’ve heard that before.” Anabelle nods, head bobbing like an ocean buoy. It’s a slow movement, adrift. Her eyes stay staring at the screen. There’s no ice in them anymore. No fire either. Just blank: a glaze which carves an endless hole in my stomach.
Why isn’t she running? Why isn’t she bringing the roof down on our heads?
“I shudder to think of what might have happened if I hadn’t escaped from that prison. If I hadn’t been able to warn you about the Faeries’ plan.”
“But you came too late,” Anabelle says. “It’s all broken. They destroyed the Palace of Westminster. They killed my brother.”
Too late.
I look back at the princess’s hand. A string of runes circles the bones of Anabelle’s wrist, thin and silky like a garden snake. Sick starts to rise in my throat.
We’re too late. Anabelle is marked. She listened to the sorceress’s lies, let the ink under her skin.
“Yes. But I saved you.” Morgaine’s words are feather soft. “Together we can rebuild our brothers’ legacies. Arthur’s and Richard’s. We can build a new Camelot. With you as queen.”
Richard’s aura flares beside me. I grab his arm, harness some of his magic before it can lash out on its own accord. Give us away.
“Not yet.” I nod at the gaps in the room which the final few Frithemaeg are just now filling. “We can’t give Morgaine any chance to escape.”
The grainy, shaky shot of the explosion gives way to Meryl Munson’s stern face. “My crew and I set out expecting to find only tragedy here on the Thames, but it seems this morning has much more to offer. A phoenix has risen from these ashes—just moments ago King Richard and his companion Lady Emrys appeared to reveal some very startling facts about the source of the explosions.”
Richard’s face appears on the screen, an exact replica of the unshaved one next to me.
Morgaine hisses on the couch, bristling like a cat held over water. “Impossible!”
“But . . . you told me Richard was dead. You said Emrys killed him.” The hazed stupor of Anabelle’s face disappears. She’s frowning. “You lied to me.”
“Silence!” The sorceress snaps at her and stands, prowls closer to the television. She grips the sides, brings herself almost nose-to-nose with the digital king. Only inches from the veiled Titania.
I look to the Faery queen for her signal to drop the veiling spell, but Titania’s hand stays still. She’s watching the princess.
“Why did you bring me here?” Anabelle’s frown carves deeper, canyons her brow and chin. The glaze in her eyes starts to peel. She’s looking around the room, down at her wrist. What she sees there douses her expression like a bucket of ice water. “YOU GAVE ME A TATTOO?”
She starts rubbing the fresh marks with frantic fingers, as if they’ll come off.
“You asked for it!” Morgaine snarls at the screen. “I said silence!”
Richard’s sister stands, cradling her inked wrist like a wounded fledgling. She stares at the sorceress’s rune-writ back. Fire and ice resurge, livid in her eyes. “You lied! You said everything would go back to the way it was before! You said I would forget!”
Anabelle’s blood magic throbs through the bunker, does what her fingers could not. Tattoo ink starts rolling down the plane of her arm, wreathing against her pointed elbow. Drip, drip, dripping down to the rug. The circlet of symbols around her wrist has watered away, the black replaced by fresh, bright blood.
The sorceress turns, back against the bricks. Stun-eyed at the sight of her ruined runes.
“Sit down!” she tries to command the princess, but her control is gone, washed away by the legacy of her half brother’s magic.
“You tried to kill my brother.” Anabelle’s arms fall to her sides—bloody and clean. She starts walking to Morgaine, step by slow step.
“To give you power. To make you the queen you were meant to be,” the sorceress’s words are hasty, tumbled.
“I don’t want that.” Anabelle keeps walking.
“Then what do you want?” Morgaine shrinks against the wall. “The Ad-hene? Come with me and I’ll carve a love spell into Kieran’s chest and make him yours.”
At the sound of Kieran’s name the room shivers and writhes. Anabelle’s fists clench—ink black and rage white.
“I want you gone. I want my brother to be safe. I want to forget.” Her words are tight with fight, love, and pain. She raises both her hands. They’re shaking, but strong. “I can do all of those things myself.”
Morgaine stares at the creases of the princess’s outstretched palms. “You think you can fight me? I have centuries on you, child. You can’t win.”
“I don’t have to,” Anabelle says. Hairline cracks ebb and blaze across the ceiling. Dust starts to fall again, sifting down through the lights. Called from the earth above. And I realize, this time, she’s in complete control.
She’s making the cracks on purpose.
“Coad!” she shouts the curse, and I shred back our veiling spell.
The roof holds and Richard runs to his sister, dodging hourglass trickles of dust from above. “Belle! Don’t you dare!”
Anabelle freezes at the sight of him. Her hands drop and the magic she was working falls away. Forgotten. Richard reaches her and she curls into his shoulder the way a child hides from midnight thunder. Her fingers are titanium tight around his cape.
The rumble around us ceases; the bunker’s framework falls still. Spells shed all around the room and the Fae appear: a beautiful, brilliant noose around Morgaine’s brick-walled corner. The sorceress doesn’t move. Her crimson lips stay flat. Those black eyes land back on me. Stare and stare and stare. Without a word.
“This kingdom will never be yours,” I tell her. “Your circle of revenge is over.”
“Is it?” she says slowly.
“We have you surrounded.” Titania unveils only inches from the sorceress. Morgaine doesn’t even flinch. “Your magic is no match. Surrender.”
“And what? You’ll let me rot away in a cell for another thousand years?” Morgaine has the nerve to laugh. “The Ad-hene have left the Isle of Man. Your prison is no more, oh Queen.”
“I don’t need a prison to contain mortals who use scribbles and trickery,” Titania says. “Surrender and I’ll allow you to live out whatever days your fading runes have given you in peace.”
“A Faery queen gone soft!” Morgaine laughs again. “You’re nothing like Mab, are you? You’ve spent too much time around this lot.”
Titania’s gaze spears—regal and disgusted—down the length of her nose. “I could unmake you now, if you desire.”
“But you see, that’s exactly it. I’d rather not die.” In one swift motion Morgaine steps away from the wall and snaps her fingers. There’s a crack so loud it sounds like the room has split in
half. Drywall and mortar dust swallow us. White as mist under the brash lights.
I throw an arm over my face, try not to choke in the bunker’s chaos. Shadows flicker past, spells are shouted—darts of light web back and forth through the room. By the time the dust clears, the ring of Fae is broken. Half the wall is missing, its bricks crumbled to dust to reveal a long stretch of dark, its edges lined with runes.
Another vanishing act.
Ferrin and Lydia start to run for the opening.
“DON’T!” I scream at the younglings. “Don’t go in there!”
Titania looks at me sharply. “We cannot let her escape, Lady Emrys.”
“The tunnels with her runes . . . Alistair looped them. He made a new labyrinth beneath London. You can’t get out without an Ad-hene.” I look straight at Ferrin and Lydia. “If you go in there, you’ll be trapped.”
“So we just let Morgaine walk away?” Mortar dust has settled in the Faery queen’s hair like snow. “Let her escape?”
“All sixteen Ad-hene were under the Palace of Westminster when it exploded. There are none left to guide her out of those tunnels.” I can’t help but look over at Anabelle as I say this. She’s still clutching her brother as tightly as she’s gripping her magic. Controlled and undone all at once.
I have no way of knowing if she heard.
“Morgaine just walked straight into her own prison . . . ,” Titania says, and looks back at the hole in the wall. We stare at it together, taking in the surreal mixture of gap and brick. Somehow, the television is still working, hanging from the remaining wall as precariously as a child’s loose tooth. A pixelated Richard is still speaking into a battalion of microphones.
“Our great kingdom has been attacked, but not by the Fae. What you see behind you is the work of a mortal named Morgaine le Fay, who’s been masquerading as Mrs. Elaine Forsythe. She and her husband do not have the interests of the British people at heart. If you doubt this, look behind me.”
The television goes dark—and for a moment I think the power finally shut off—but it’s just the camera focusing on ash clouds.
“The Fae have been our allies since the time of King Arthur the Pendragon. They have protected us from enemies we did not even know we had. If we want to survive, we must keep this alliance. Apart we are weak. Together we are strong. A perfect union.”
The Richard on the screen looks down at the woman beside him. The one whose hair blends with the night. That was the moment he squeezed my hand. The moment our Morse code smiles leapt across at each other. Not so secret.
He goes on, “We will have our moments of doubt. We will have our share of naysayers. But I plan to stand by Queen Titania and her Fae. My vision for the integration is even clearer now than ever before. We cannot live in a world ruled by fear and uncertainty. I will keep my word to the Fae. We will take these ashes and rise. Together we will build a new kingdom.”
I look over my shoulder to find the real Richard. Anabelle is slouched against his shoulder like a rag doll. Shadows nest under her eyes—shades of weary and relief. Black and blood slick down her right arm, pool like a dark soul at her feet.
“What did you think you were doing, Belle?” Richard looks down at his sister. “You almost got yourself killed!”
The princess’s eyebrows quirk, animated by sibling banter. “You really think I was going to let the roof fall on my head? Don’t be daft!”
Richard blinks. “But—”
“I had a plan. I always have a plan,” she says. “Kieran taught me how to shield myself. The collapse wouldn’t have touched me.”
“And the marks?” I nod at her mess of an arm. “Were those part of your plan?”
“The spell Morgaine used to freeze everyone in the Orangery didn’t work on me. I pretended to be frozen. I heard everything she said in the garden—about the blood magic being stronger than her runes. About Kieran . . .” Anabelle swallows. “Anyway, I figured if her freezing spell wouldn’t work on me, her other runes wouldn’t either. I knew the only way Morgaine would let me close is if she thought she was controlling me.”
“You got a tattoo to save my life?” Richard’s voice is laugh and serious all at once. Gravity heavy. Suspended in disbelief.
Anabelle nods. “I tried. I had to. After the Ad-hene took Emrys away, Morgaine approached me in the Orangery. She said she knew I was hurting—that she could take the pain away and make me forget everything that happened. I thought my blood magic would protect me. But when she carved the runes in, they ended up working. Everything got hazy. Until just now.”
“When you started getting emotional,” I say. “When your blood magic kicked in and purged Morgaine’s runecraft.”
“Have I ever told you how bloody brilliant you are?” Richard squeezes his sister’s shoulder.
A smile slips onto the princess’s face—so different from the ones she saved for Kieran. More solid. Made of something stronger than flutters and heartache. “Not nearly enough as you should.”
“Belle, you’re bloody brilliant,” Richard says, and plants a kiss on his sister’s head.
Titania, however, is mercury rage—fury and bright from listening to Anabelle’s tale. She turns on the younglings, lashes them with a voice like a whip. “You let Morgaine mark the princess without interfering?”
Helene takes the strike of her question well, without flinching. “I wasn’t aware it had happened. It must have been while Ferrin and I were deciding who should return to court and warn you. Her wrist was covered with a sleeve the whole time.”
The Faery queen stares: vicious, speechless, sterling. Finally she turns to me. “The Guard needs much reshaping, Lady Emrys. The day will come when I can endure London for more than a few short hours, but I fear it will not be soon. Given your newfound powers I’m wondering if you might be willing to take up some of your old responsibilities.”
Her words whisk—airy and light—in my head. It takes me a moment to pull them all together, find their meaning. “You want me to lead the Guard? But I’m still mortal.”
“If we are truly to be united, these things should not matter,” the Faery queen says. “You’re a strong leader, Lady Emrys. They’ll need your guidance if they’re to piece the Palace of Westminster back together.”
Richard blinks, surprised. “You can do that?”
“All things can be made whole with time,” Titania tells him. “We will take these ashes and rise. Build a new kingdom. Just as you promised your people we would.”
“You mean to fix it with mending spells.” I think of the vase Anabelle sprayed to pieces in Windsor’s ballroom. How I pulled its few dozen shards back together with a single spell.
But it will take more than a few spells to fix Morgaine’s utter destruction: stones shattered into millions of dust particles, ashes spread to all corners of sea and sky. “It’ll have to be done stone by stone. That could take months, years to rebuild.”
The Faery queen’s gaze silvers over the bunker’s damage: Ink stains. Blood drops. Dust-covered royals. Daunted Frithemaeg. A hurting heart. A ruined wall.
Titania looks back to me.
“Then we must get to work,” she says.
Twenty-Nine
My sleep is dark. Dreamless. It fills my night hours, spills into the days. The five moon scars on my arm stay closed and Guinevere does not return. Her face is lost to the mists. Swallowed by a Labyrinth which can never be unlocked, now that the Ad-hene are dead.
Most mornings I wake up with Richard by my side. Our fingers are usually entwined, as if we’re terrified to let each other go even in sleep. So many times we keep holding on, our fingers wrapped like stubborn vines, soaking in the morning light, staving off the day as long as we can. Days of fresh integration laws, rebuilding plans, training ourselves in new magic, whipping the Guard into shape. The responsibilities are as endless as before.
But now we are armed to face them. With our trowels and our swords. Our magic and our love.
This morning R
ichard stays asleep and I let him lie. My eyes are still half-dazzled when I shuffle into Buckingham Palace’s dining room. I don’t notice Anabelle until I’ve already taken a seat. She sits across the table, sipping a cup of tea. While I’m still wiping unseemly crust from my face, she’s already pinned and painted. Hair and makeup ever flawless.
“Morning.”
Anabelle has been staying here at Buckingham ever since Phoenix Night (a title the newspapers coined). Yet the princess has made herself scarce, keeping away from us and the press. Appearing only for meals and the blood magic training sessions we’ve started in the garden.
“Sleep well?” I ask.
“I’m trying.” She’s looking down at her tea, running a finger around the rim of her cup.
“Well, that’s something,” I offer.
Silence.
“I could use some help packing for my holiday in the Highlands,” I try again.
She nods. But not in the way I’d like.
Lawton brings a tray to the table. Its edges brim with my usual: a full English breakfast, black coffee, and the morning’s headlines. I clear my throat and look at the headlines. JULIAN FORSYTHE JAILED FOR ATTEMPTED REGICIDE cozies up next to WINFRED REINSTATED PRIME MINISTER and RESTORATION OF THE PALACE OF WESTMINSTER SCHEDULED TO BEGIN NEXT WEEK.
It’s been nice, having the press on our side. It keeps my appetite up as I tuck into the plate of sausage, eggs, tomatoes, beans, and toast. Eggs first this morning, I decide, and stab a fork into the over-easy yolk. Gold pours like feelings all across my plate just as Anabelle speaks.
“Richard told me everything that happened in the tunnels. About what Kieran did.”
I watch the egg bleed out, until my plate is swimming in yellow.
“His true self did shine through. In the end. He gave his life to keep you safe. He saved us all.” I tell this to my beans and toast. But these next words—these next three words—I cannot say them to the broiled tomato, which suddenly reminds me of a pulped heart.
