All That Burns (25 page)

Anabelle pauses, looks up at him. “What do you feed your prisoners? I want to make sure it’s not on the menu I’m putting together. Don’t want to let him catch on that I suspect anything.”

“We never fed our prisoners,” Kieran tells her. “Most immortals never acquire a taste for food.”

“But—what about Guinevere? And fake-Julian? You never gave them anything to eat? That whole time they were there?” Anabelle’s eyes get wider with every question—glimmering horror and Word documents. “They must have been so hungry. . . .”

Kieran tilts his head, all of his curls spilling to one side. “What does hunger feel like?”

“It’s like wanting something, except worse.” Anabelle studies those curls—spiraling in and out of the electric light. Her hand is tight by her leg, as if she’s pushing back the urge to reach out and touch them. “If you ignore it, it starts to hurt. And if you keep ignoring it, it becomes all you can think about. Until you get what you need. Or you die.”

“Like love,” Kieran suggests.

The princess’s breath goes sharp. I wonder if Kieran notices: how she’s watching him, how his words must be spearing her heart like a hunted whale.

“I—I wouldn’t know.” This time her denial is quiet, a whispered thing. She shifts gears, driving their conversation into a whole new direction with a louder voice. “I can’t imagine being hungry and vitamin D–deprived for so long. . . . No wonder fake-Julian is so angry. That literally sounds like hell.”

The Ad-hene says nothing. His face goes back to its hard, stony stare. The one which was once so constant—the one that’s been crumbling under jars of beetroot and sunlight as gold as the princess’s hair.

“Sorry,” Anabelle says quickly. “I know it’s your home. I don’t mean to criticize it so much.”

“It’s where I came from, yes. But it hasn’t felt like home
in a long, long time.” Kieran’s words are slow and careful. Handpicked. “It’s not a nice place. Not anymore. Especially compared to all of this.” He nods up to the sky-born angels, their white feathers splaying over us like a canopy.

Anabelle’s mouth pulls to one side, wry. She snaps her laptop shut. “I know it might be hard to believe, but there were times when these palaces felt like a prison.”

Kieran keeps watching the angels. Taking in every intimate detail of the artist’s brushstrokes.

“I mean—it’s not at all like the maze you live in. But there were so many times growing up when all I wanted was a normal life. I spent hours looking out windows watching children play in St. James’s Park. Scraping their knees. Getting dirty. I wanted more than anything to be out there with them. Chasing ducks and fighting with stick swords and not caring about manners or harp lessons or whether or not my stockings had runs in them.”

Even from here, with one ear smudged against velvet, I hear the thickness in her voice. Kieran hears it too. His stare has fallen from the angels, drifted to Anabelle. The princess looks down into the teacup, as if she’s really telling all of this to the leftover sips of Earl Grey.

“People see this life and they want it. They think it’s
something out of a fairy tale: castles, pretty dresses, magazine covers, and all the rest. But they don’t realize how much it weighs. My life—it’s never really been mine. I’ve always had people telling me how to act. Where to study. Who to be friends with. I have to be flawless all of the time or else I get pounced on by the press and my mother.

“Richard always hated the pressure. He ran away from it. But I’ve tried to please everyone. To be Britain’s perfect princess. And it’s just bloody exhausting.” Her last few words are edged with anger. She places the teacup back on its tray with such vigor that it rains amber drops across her wrist.

Kieran shifts; the bed creaks under his weight.

“These past few days . . . they’ve been awful, but they’ve also been illuminating. For the first time in my life I’ve felt free,” she drifts off.

“I know what you mean.” His hand rubs up the ridged muscles of his bare arm. Over his mark. “Not all prisons have bars or walls. To be someone you’re not is a prison in itself.”

He says this and those eyes cut over to my chair. I wonder if he knows I’m awake, if he hears the extra-heavy patter of my heart. How it flutters and stings under his words.

“But I can’t just stop being a princess.”

“I suppose not.” Kieran frowns. His fingers are still on his mark, tracing it round and round. Following the silver lines without even looking at them. His eyes are still latched on to my chair.

It’s no use pretending anymore. I’m awake and he knows it.

“What if who I want to be and who I’m meant to be aren’t the same?” Anabelle goes on. “What if they never fit together?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Kieran asks my chair, my barely closed lids.

I sit up, as if I’m just twisting awake: all limb and yawn. “What are we talking about?”

Anabelle flinches, puts on a face. The softness from just moments before hides behind curtains of tense brow and a cocktail-hour voice.

“Dramatic, philosophical things.” Her voice goes deep. Like a play narrator. “Fate versus free will. What if the person you were born to be isn’t who you want to be?”

I give her the only answer I can think of. “Then I suppose you must decide which life you want more. Make your choice.”

Kieran slides off the bed, leaves the princess alone in
the downy waves of comforter. He moves back to his window perch, where the first hints of dawn smudge against the glass.

“Easy words,” he says softly. The icy light blooms and spreads across his face, making him look like some sort of winter god. “Not all of us are strong enough to fight fate. To wage war against the nature of things.”

Fate. The nature of things.
Is that what I’m battling against? Is that what’s dragging Richard away? Wrenching us apart?

No
.

“It’s Mordred,” I say suddenly, replaying the final moments of my dream over and over again. Silver-scratched runes branding my eyes as the black knight plunged his sword into Richard’s chest. Plunged me into waking.

How many more times will I have to watch him die?

“What?” Anabelle chirps from the bed.

“Mordred,” I force the name out again. “He’s the one pretending to be Julian Forsythe. The same sorcerer who killed King Arthur.”

Kieran looks over at me, painted in frosty surprise and morning sun. “How do you know?”

I’m about to tell him. About to let the truth slip out, when I catch myself. The dreams, they’re the last corner of
my life that belong to just me and Richard. The last hint of mortality I can cling to when I’m around the Ad-hene, listening to the siren call of other choices.

“I—I just remembered,” I say. “He used rune magic. The symbols were etched into his armor the day he invaded Camelot.”

Anabelle looks too pale, almost sick as she asks, “Do you think he’s going to kill Richard?”

The question—same but different—circles in Kieran’s eyes like a wolf around prey.
Is it worth his death?

“I don’t know.” I look down at my ringless finger, lined up with all the others in a tight fist. Ready for a fight.

But if it truly is fate I’m up against . . .

Am I willing to accept the cost?

A
nabelle keeps plowing through the day. Before breakfast her invitation to Julian Forsythe is sent and she’s perfected basic memory modification spells under Kieran’s careful tutelage. By lunch she’s already agreed to an exclusive interview with the nation’s largest news network to tell her version of the kidnapping and cement her innocence in Mordred-Julian’s mind. Kensington Gardens become overrun. Extension cords wind alongside leafless vines. The hustle of the camera crew sprays gravel off the neatly raked paths.

Kieran and I stand on the edge of the garden. Watching as camera techs set up their equipment and a makeup artist erases the sleepless night from the princess’s eyes. Eric stands watch from the opposite side of the garden, looming like a dark omen in the middle of bare rose brambles. His eyes rove the gravel paths; his hands stay rigid by his stun gun.

“Are you really going to let the princess go through
with this plan?” The Ad-hene’s eyes are anchored on Anabelle’s back, as attentive and alert as Eric.

I take a deep breath, look down at the flowerbed by my feet. I can’t be certain, but I think this is where the marigolds once were. Before the frost settled in, turned everything to black and wither.

“You think I shouldn’t?” I ask him.

“You know the risk as well as I. Mordred is a powerful sorcerer. Cunning. If he catches the princess in her deception . . .” Kieran’s jaw tightens, an intricate weave of muscles. “Are you really willing to let the princess risk everything?”

“Anabelle’s right. We have to try.” The Ad-hene looks down at me as I say this. His silvery attentions pouring like a storm over my shoulders, into my awareness.

We’re not alone, but with the veiling spell wrapped tight and the princess’s back to us we might as well be.

Futures are branching out before me. Forking with every breath. Every fresh pulse of Kieran’s
follee-shiu
.

“We’re running out of options,” I keep talking, as if more words could keep what’s coming at bay. “The Frithemaeg are gone. The princess is too new in her magic. And you yourself said you weren’t strong enough.”

“Not alone.” Kieran’s words hang like ripe fruit, begging
to be plucked. “We could face Mordred.
Together
.”

There’s no mistaking his meaning. Not with the gleam in his eyes which reminds me so very much of the tunnel. The words still echoing off of those rune-struck tiles:
He’s not your only choice.
The empty space that’s slowly collapsing between us.

“I—I can’t.” Why do these words feel like molasses stuck on my tongue, the back of my throat? So hard to get out?

“You’ve trapped yourself, become what you’re not.” He reaches out, fingers ghosting along the ends of my black, black hair. “I still see the fire in you. You’re only hurting yourself by trying to put it out.”

It’s as if the world has melted around us, fallen away. It’s just Kieran and me, standing in the hot cocoon of his veiling spell. I’m so very aware of his fingertips. How they hover just a moment from my skin.

The pine-needle prickles in my gut have grown, swallowed everything. The whole of me is a forest aflame.

“You gave up magic for love. But what if you don’t have to?” His whisper slides around my neck. Possessive, gripping, desperate. “I know you feel it too. There’s something here. Between us.”

I can’t tell him there isn’t.

“Take back your magic.” He leans in. Closer, ever closer. “Set yourself free.”

Sweet, sickly poison: the taste of these words. It crawls sluggish through my veins, makes me still. Unable to move or even breathe. I’m simply standing in front of the Ad-hene, drunk off of his magic, his words, my mind spinning.

Richard. I love Richard.

But that doesn’t stop Kieran from pressing his lips to mine.

He kisses me. Hard.

Kieran is all storm and sea. His lips draw me in like a whirlpool, spin me. Deeper into the rawness of his spirit—the pieces of him no body could convey. The true, wild danger of the Ad-hene.

It’s like catching the crest of a wave, plummeting through the water’s foamy fury. Fast and fierce and uncontrollable. I feel Kieran’s magic tugging my soul, riptide strong, wanting to consume. Carry me away to the other shore.

Back to where I started.

Kieran’s hands glide like water down my neck, my shoulders, my arms. His palm passes over the five crusty nail
marks. They call out—sharp pain—howling Guinevere’s words back at me:

The circling sea will swallow us whole. I flipped wrong
.

All of me goes stiff. The Ad-hene’s kiss becomes fraught. Beyond hungry.

The only other soul in the world like me screams, screams, screams in my memories:
I flipped wrong and the world burned.

Like me.

I tear away. My hair is a tangled mess over my eyes—webbing black through the sight of Kieran. His face belongs to someone who just lost something important—jigsawed with emotions. Furrowed brow for confusion. Hard jaw for anger. Shining eyes for pleading. Chin wrinkled for hurt. And something else I can’t seem to place—swimming in the tension of those lips which just touched mine.

“No. No. This is all wrong.” I shake my head, as if that will clear it. All it does is set me spinning. Everything inside me is so far from north.

I look away from the Ad-hene, try to get my bearings. Down at the churned soil where the marigolds used to root: an empty bed full of holes. Over to Eric’s stern, knight-like vigil.

And then I see Anabelle.

The princess stands alone in a crowd of people, staring at me with eyes that could pierce stone. They hit me like twin javelins, sink deep into my gut.

She saw everything.

Kieran’s breath goes silver-edged, as if Anabelle’s eyes have gutted him too. “Emrys . . .”

But whatever the Ad-hene has to say, I don’t want to hear it. I step away from him, into the dirt of the flowerbed. The loose, broken soil swallows my feet, just like the mud from the dream. Only instead of running to someone, I’m fleeing.

Soil clings to my steps, leaving trails of filth where I walk. Veiled dirt only Anabelle can see.

But she isn’t looking anymore. She’s sitting on the garden bench, getting her microphone fitted to the collar of her designer dress. Her hands are folded into her lap like a neat valentine. Her long hair is wound up tight, showcasing the beautiful sculpt of her face.

There’s nothing in her expression, not a flicker or flinch to indicate what she just saw.

I halt only a meter away from the bench, where I’m drowning in a sea of gravel, grips, and gaffers. So close I could speak to her. But she’s not alone. On the other end of the bench is the same brunette reporter who
interviewed Edmund: Meryl Munson.

Even if I could speak to Anabelle, I have no idea what I might say. No apology, no excuse can wash the stain of Kieran from my lips.