All That Glows (35 page)

Peace that’s beyond me now.

“Let’s take her back to the castle. It will do us no good to linger here,” Herne growls, his ember eyes flicker meaningfully toward the princess.

With her shoulders slumped and her hair inextricably knotted, Anabelle reminds me of a lost, young girl. But when her eyes meet mine, they harden and all thoughts of weepy children are lost to me.

“You promised you would protect him! He’s dead because of you!” she yells, her stare pinning me like gravity. Her accusations are only lighter echoes of the condemnations ringing through my mind.

I don’t speak. I don’t move. I just stare back into the devastation.

Anabelle keeps screaming words she doesn’t mean. Words she has to say.

It’s Herne who finally intervenes. He approaches the princess and touches her on the shoulder with surprising gentleness. There’s magic in his fingers—a soothing, merciful spell that causes Anabelle to crumple into his arms, fast asleep. Golden hair spills over the woodlord’s leather gloves as he gathers her to his chest.

“Come, Lady Emrys.” He steps toward the edge of the clearing. “I’ll see to it that the Dryads bring Lady Breena after us.”

There’s no will in me. No reason to fight. I follow the wild spirit through his woods, my thoughts buzzing with Anabelle’s words of blame. Not once do I look back.

There are many dead. More than I thought possible. Corpses drape Windsor’s turrets and walls—macabre garlands. Limp bodies of Black Dogs and Green Women lie tangled with the hollow forms of Fae. I recognize some of them as we separate the bodies, burning the soul feeders and setting the Frithemaeg aside for a final good-bye. Others, like Titania and her attendants, have vanished altogether, unmade by more brutal spells.

I feel useless without Richard, floundering in the middle of this desolate sea. His body isn’t among the others. Not that I expected it to be. It’s far from us now, in the clutches of some Banshee or Green Woman scavenging it for blood magic. They’ll find nothing. It isn’t Richard anymore. Just a carved-out shell.

It’s evening when we begin the funeral rites. It isn’t often that Fae must say good-bye to their own. Some of the younglings have never even been to such a ceremony. I stand by Breena’s body.

Tears blot my eyes as I arrange the leafy tiara perfectly against her head. Breena had been there even in my earliest days. Her words were the ones I followed. Her counsel and confidence had been as vital as water.

And now, like Richard, she’s gone.

I stroke her hair. Each brush of my finger brings back a separate memory. Of how, in the early days, we flew along coasts without tiring, grazing cliffs and skimming the iron-gray waves of the North Sea. Of the battles we fought with magic and steel, of the ballads that sprung from them. Of the gowns and gavottes, the cellos and long, candlelit dances drenched with wine. Of her pouch of birdseed and those dirty, adoring pigeons.

There are well over a hundred bodies laid out on Windsor’s emerald lawns. Like Breena, the dead are dressed in white, crowned with garlands the Dryads fashioned for us. Every surviving spirit and even some of the mortals are here, gathered around the fallen with closed, solemn faces. My breath grows weak at the sight of so much death and, for a moment, I’m not sure I can stand.

“Lady Emrys?”

It’s Helene, now next to me. Several younglings fan out behind her, their mouths drawn tight. I stare at them, keeping my precious words to myself for a moment longer. My throat hasn’t released me since that hour in the clearing.

The Fae is undeterred by my silence. “We were wondering if you might conduct the ceremony.”

A quick scan at the ranks of the living confirms what I suspected. In light of Breena’s death and Titania’s disappearance, I’m the oldest here. It’s my duty to perform the funeral rites, to cast the farewell spell.

“Will you do it?” Helene nudges after another silent moment.

“Yes,” I say because I must.

Satisfied with my answer, the younglings return to the group of observers. I feel eyes on me. The gazes of both the dead and the living, waiting for me to speak.

“Friends and Fae,” I begin. My voice wavers as it breaks its dormancy. “It’s easy for us to forget that this life comes at a price. In the end we all must pay it, whether it be a score of years or a millennia from now. These noble sisters of ours have willingly accepted that debt so that others might live.

“We do not know what lies beyond this plain. We can’t imagine where our sisters might be now—yet we know they aren’t gone. Not really. We must not let their sacrifices be in vain. We must continue to defend what they died for and live in the acceptance that sooner or later there’s an end. One day, when the dark glass between lives is lifted, we’ll all be together again.” The choke returns, trapping what other words I might speak in the lump of my throat.

I wrap my hand around Breena’s rigid grasp. Her fingers are like stone, pale and unyielding.

“Thank you, friend, for standing by me all these years,” I whisper into her wintry ear. “I’ll see you again, soon enough. Hæl abide.”

At my farewell spell, the dead Frithemaegs’ bodies begin disintegrating. A light, great and gold, wells up from inside each departed Fae. Every secret of Breena’s alabaster skin is illuminated with the brightness. Pieces of her begin to dissolve, fly apart like dandelion seeds blown straight into the sun. I hold on as tightly as I can, until it’s only my own palm my nails dig into and Breena is gone.

I stand here as the others disperse, disappearing back into the castle. The sun is just slipping out of sight. Its rays wash over everything: my bare arms, my bloodstained skirts, the empty grass. Every detail is redeemed in this dying light.

But not everyone is gone. I see his shadow first, long and terrifying. The sharp edges of his boots creep into my sight.

“We had an agreement, Lady Emrys. Lest you forget.” The evening trembles against Herne’s cold words. With them comes the night.

“I know.”

The spirit holds out his hand, ready and waiting. I stare at the smooth, eternal leather of his glove. Even with Richard gone, I have no desire to cling to my immortality. Death is something I’ve already embraced, a much-needed end.

“There’s something I must to do first. I need one more night,” I tell him.

The woodlord grunts. His coal-glow eyes pierce through the gathering darkness. “I’ll give you until dawn, woodling. Then I’ll take what’s rightfully mine.”

He turns and flows back to his woods, where his trees and hounds are waiting. And I stand alone, aching for everything that will not return.

I spend the night on the battlements, gazing into the black space that holds the stars. Constellations are strung tight and unwavering, telling the same stories they always have for those who take the time to listen. Everything is so quiet, so bright after the battle. I stare on and on, trying to keep the pain from eating me alive.

And I know now that the emptiness will always be there, yawning wide until the end. Because some cruel twist of fate decided that Richard’s sacrifice was better. Because I lived and he did not.

It’s still dark when I enter Anabelle’s bedroom. The princess is curled on top of the comforter, in the exact same spot Herne placed her almost an entire day before. His spell was a powerful one—staving off her grief and hysterics with heavy, dreamless sleep.

Her eyelids flutter as I draw close, but she doesn’t open her eyes. I’d never noticed before how much she looks like Richard. The same high cheekbones, the light splash of freckles coaxed out by the sun. Their resemblance is so strong that I can’t bear to look at her long. Instead I stare out the window, where the moonlight tangles with the tops of Herne’s trees.

The memory spell builds; I weave it slowly, deliberately. It has to be just the right strength—potent enough to make her forget everything that happened in the woods that night. Strong enough to stanch some of the princess’s agony. If I could I would erase everything, give Anabelle a fresh start, a childhood without Richard. But the world, and the order of things, won’t allow that.

Once the magic is finally ready I look back down. Anabelle’s face is serene, despite her mass of tangled hair and the smudges of dirt. I can’t make myself speak the word that will release her from her past. She needs the pain and memories as much as I do. She needs to know that her brother died well. Who am I to take that from her?

My hands drop to my side, and the magic slips away, unused.

It’s almost, but not quite, dawn. Herne will be waiting for me. I’ve already stalled as much as I dare.

“I’m sorry, Anabelle. I’m sorry I failed.” There are so many other things I could tell her, but none of them seem fitting. In the depths of her slumber she won’t hear them anyway. “Good-bye.”

I turn and go.

Mist gathers at the edge of the woods, wreathing in and out of ghoulish trees. I expect Herne to rise out of its embrace at any moment, but everything remains still. I draw closer to his woods with hesitant steps, feeling for his magic.

“Herne?” My call is little more than a whisper. The stillness of this night’s end seems holy, something I shouldn’t break.

The answer I receive is not from the woodlord, but his trees. The Dryads have returned to their leafy abodes. They stir the branches without any wind to guide them, their leaves brushing together hushed words.

Farther in. He’s waiting.

I follow their subtle movements, leaving a trail of scattered dewdrops in the mossy, morning earth. Here, in the dark woods, it’s impossible not to think about Richard. Just a few nights ago we were walking this very path together to see Herne, to bargain for our lives.

I don’t realize where I am until it’s too late. The clearing seems larger than normal. The impression of the king’s body still scars its center. The trees have retreated from it.

I collapse to my knees, press my fingers into the chewed, rotting leaves. Birdsong, the hymn of nightingales, bursts into the glade. Their notes punch into the silence like a drum, trill and hopeful. What was once—what is—beautiful, only causes my fists and teeth to clench.

“Shut up!” I scream into the branches. All I want is silence. I want to drown in it.

“Yelling at birds, are we?”

I shudder at the voice behind me, but I don’t turn. The gloom of Herne’s presence is obvious enough.

“Why did you bring me here?”

The woodlord steps around into my sight, eyes burning fast into mine. “Bring you here? What are you talking about?”

“Your trees, they guided me to this place.” I look past the wild spirit’s gaze into the surrounding woods. The darkness beyond them gives way to the sun. The morning light is soft, casting pale greens and yellows through the tree branches.

“The ways of Dryads are strange.” Herne shrugs. “I have little to do with them. Are you ready to give me your magic?”

A sound apart from the birdsong emerges from the woods before I can reply. It’s the noise of dead branches breaking, snapping under the weight of unseen feet. Both Herne and I look up to the same edge of clearing. Duchess Titania stands under the arch of two young saplings. Her platinum hair is loose and luminous in the dawn’s growing gold. Her face is just as severe and composed as I remember, worlds beyond the dying Fae in the castle.

“You’re alive?” I manage in my shock. Like everyone else, I assumed that Titania’s disappearance meant her undoing. She’d only been waiting, deep in the wood’s embrace, until her sickness retreated.

“Yes, and it seems that I’m not the only one.” Titania glances back over her shoulder, waves to someone hidden in the trees. “We found him just a short while ago. He wandered into our camp, as if he was sleepwalking.”

I barely hear her words as a new face breaks out of the foliage. Everything I’ve grown to love is still there: the clean slant of his jaw, his almond eyes, the light laugh lines that will only deepen with age, his smile, clear and bright. But there’s something more now, something just beneath the skin that causes him to glow.

I sit still, stunned. The man I saw two nights ago, blue and caked with blood, could never become the one that stands here now.

“We thought the art of magic was lost to the mortals, that the crown was simply a carrier of the power and not a wielder. We were wrong.” Titania shakes her head. “Something woke it up in him.”

Richard finishes the distance between us in three strides. When he reaches me he falls to his knees, brings his eyes down to mine. Two strong, steady arms pull me into him. Our chests press together, breathing in unison, and all doubt vanishes. This is my Richard.

“You’re alive.” My words are made of laughter and a great, joyous gasp—they don’t feel like mine. “Greater Spirit. You’re alive!”

He hugs me tighter, gentle fingers tugging through my hair. His breath curls over my neck, taking in my scent. My skin rejoices under it.

“How?” I pull back and the sight of him is new all over again. New and glorious. “I saw you dying.”

“I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “I felt myself die. Or, I think I died. I don’t know. But then I woke up and I was wandering through the forest. They found me.”

I leave Richard’s eyes and reenter the glade. Herne stands with his arms crossed. Titania and her company stare at us—utterly beautiful sculptures—both surprised and unreadable.

“Something woke up the blood magic,” the duchess offers. “It healed him. There are traces of it all over him. And even some on you,” she adds, her eyebrow quirked.

The blood magic. Just what the ravens predicted. But what woke it? The kiss? We’d kissed before. What made that night so different?

“Tell me, has there ever been something between you two? A connection?” Titania looks between us, as if trying to read our short history together.

“The first time we met . . .” I pause. “There was something like electricity. I don’t know. It wasn’t magic necessarily.”

“It’s called a soul-tie. It’s rare, uncommon, but it does happen. Your souls tied together. It also meant your magics connected. When Richard gave himself up for you, your magic responded. It sparked his to life.”