All That Burns (26 page)

With one shout from the crew Meryl Munson looks straight into the camera, all smile, telling her viewers the story they already know. How, the very same day King Richard disappeared, Britain’s princess was snatched straight out of a high-security bunker, a victim of the very magic her brother swore to protect.

Anabelle’s smile grows tighter and tighter—a rope on the verge of snap. It’s winched as taut as possible by the time Meryl turns and finally asks her a question.

“You’ve had quite a past few days, Your Highness. Can you tell me a bit about your ordeal?”

The princess takes a deep, steady breath. “After Richard vanished, my protection team took my mother and me to a secure location. I insisted Emrys accompany us. Once we arrived at the bunker she overpowered the guards and kidnapped me.”

Meryl Munson leans forward, yet somehow manages to keep her face angled always at the camera. “What was going through your mind when you realized Emrys had betrayed you?”

“I couldn’t believe it at first. Didn’t want to.” Anabelle swallows. The short golden charm on her necklace dips into the base of her throat. “She seemed to love Richard so much. . . . She was already a part of our family. I thought of her as a sister. To see her true nature come out so viciously—it was a shock.”

I know this is the story she meant to tell when she agreed to the interview. The words she planned on saying. Yet every one of them tears into me, until I’m riddled through with holes. All of me feels uprooted.

“Not everyone seemed so shocked.” Meryl says this like an admonishment. “Julian Forsythe has been preaching the dangers of immortals ever since Emrys first appeared. Wasn’t he the one who rescued you?”

“I was very fortunate he came into his office when he did. Without him I’d still be out there, a prisoner.” The princess’s brown eyes don’t move from the reporter’s face. She doesn’t look at the camera. Or at me.

“He’s certainly become the hero of the hour.” Meryl’s smile is saccharine—sugar cubes dunked in syrup. “The emergency elections are scheduled to take place tomorrow and according to polls, the tides have turned in the M.A.F.’s favor. Julian Forsythe will become prime minister, which should make it much easier for all the mortal
defense and anti-integration bills to pass through the houses of Parliament. Do you have any thoughts on this?”

“Richard believed we could live in harmony with the Fae. That their presence would enrich our lives and launch us into a new age of progress. But my brother believed many things which have turned out not to be true. It seems he was being deceived.” There’s a slight tremor in Anabelle’s voice. She’s an excellent actress. If she’s acting. Her eyes don’t find me again. Not even once. “I think we should do what we must to keep this kingdom safe. If that means appointing a new prime minister, then so be it. The Fae are dangerous. They can’t be trusted.”

Kieran is still standing in the ruin of marigolds. Staring. Even from here I can see the rawness of his face.

Meryl stumbles into the long stretch of Anabelle’s silence with a squeaking question. “So you would say this experience has swayed your stance in favor of segregation?”

Anabelle’s face tilts farther toward the camera, but her stare lodges straight into me.

“We’re better off without them,” she says.

I follow the princess around like a desperate puppy all afternoon. She’s pacing the way Richard used to when he
was upset. Round and round the maze of Kensington. Past the ghosts of old men looming in oil portraits. Past all the many windows which look out on the world’s bleakness: London passing, trees stripped and crippled by autumn.

Eric follows the princess too, copying her wordless march around the palace. And Kieran—I haven’t seen him since we left the gardens. He can’t have gone far; his veiling spell is still choked tight around me. The only thing between me and an army of stun guns. I keep waiting for her to return to the bedroom, where Eric’s eyes and stun gun cannot reach.

But Anabelle does anything she can to avoid the bedroom. She has tea with her mother, who spends half of the hour talking about all the dead ends Protection Command has hit in their search for Richard and the other half talking about me. After that Anabelle speaks with the kitchen staff, going over the dinner menu for the tenth time. She confirms the florist and edits the guest list as responses trickle in.

It’s not until she ticks a neat check beside
Mr. and Mrs. Julian Forsythe
that I finally speak. I don’t care that any odd movement or word of hers could give me away to Eric’s falcon eyes. I have to get this out.

“Belle, please.”

Nothing. Her face is motionless as she guides her pen over the paper.

“What you saw,” I go on, push past the thickness in my throat. “It was a mistake.”

The line she’s striking through a couple’s name wavers; her hand is shaking. The princess puts down the pen and folds the list away.

“I think I’m going to retire for a bit,” she tells Eric. “Last night didn’t bring me much rest and I want to make sure I have plenty of energy for the party tonight.”

I follow her wake to Richard’s old bedroom, Anabelle shuts the door and marches across the carpet, her heels digging deep—punching through fruit and warriors’ faces. The staccato of her step, the cold, clear blaze in her eyes reminds me so very much of her mother.

She stares and stares. Without a word.

“What you saw in the garden. It was a mistake.” Did I say that already? My words feel scrabbling and useless, like a tortoise on its back. “He kissed me and—”

“I saw it all,” she says.

“I love your brother. Very much.” I offer this up like a sacrifice. Wait for her knife.

The princess shuts her eyes. Her fingers press like spindles against her temples, the way they did in the bunker.

“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.

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 immovable 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.”