by Ryan Graudin
Heat sears my back, as if the fire from the valley has clawed to where we stand. I try to pull away, but the ancient’s grip is tight.
A snaggletoothed smile takes over her face. “You found it. But blind eyes still need to see.”
I look away from her, down to the ground. The ravens are gone.
“Puppets. With smiles on their faces. That’s how they died.” Guinevere cackles and releases my arm. I stumble back. Over the ledge, and into the valley. Onto the coal-hot stones of Camelot.
Five
I’m still reaching for something to hold on to, something to save me from the fall seconds after I jerk awake. My eyes are open, but I still see Guinevere’s crazed face. Her laughter rings through my ears.
I’m breathing hard, staring at the golden moldings of the ceiling. I’ve been asleep for hours.
Richard’s laptop and notes are gone, as well as the newspaper. An antique candelabra sits in their place. Its three flames sputter, offering a small globe of light into the vast room.
It seems Lights-down has already started.
I groan and wipe some hair out of my face. My fingers come back slick with sweat. Traces of the dream still rage under my skin. It felt so real. As if I were there again, watching the Pendragon’s kingdom go down in flames. A fire so hot and strong it made my arm hairs singe. I can still feel the burn. . . .
“You had a nightmare?”
My heart is already racing, but the suddenness of Richard’s voice causes it to explode. He’s in a chair just beyond the candles’ glow, watching me.
“I—” I stop. Swallow. A nightmare. That’s all it was. Just my brain taking fragments of my day. Trying to make sense of the past twenty-four hours.
But terror still clings to the edges of my throat. I look at the trio of flames and all I see is the castle. Twisting arms of fire, eating away an entire kingdom. I lean forward, snuff all three with a single breath. The room swirls into smoky darkness.
I scrape meager magic from my veins, weave it into a whisper: “Inlíhte.”
The room flickers in my weak, watery light. I don’t even have the strength to loop it. The glow is already growing dimmer, shedding brightness every second.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Richard’s voice is hoarse, as if he’s been crying. His face looks so sad in my hungry, fading light. “I thought I lost you, Embers. When you jumped and you didn’t come up . . . It was awful. A thousand hells.”
I think of the newspaper, with Richard’s relentless stare begging me not to jump. I think of the way I tore from his grasp, hurtling myself into those dark and vicious waters.
I should have listened. I should have waited for Helene and the other Frithemaeg to show up. I should have stood by Richard’s side. But I know I couldn’t. If there was another Kelpie, raging and frothing under my feet, I would jump again.
For some reason I thought it would be easy—passing on the baton—letting others handle the fight for me. But the jumping, the fighting—it’s in my blood. It’s everything I’ve ever known. Thousands of years can’t be let go in a single second. Lifetimes can’t be undone so simply.
I don’t know how to tell him this.
“I’m all right, Richard.” My words are timid, hollowed out like bones. “I’m right here.”
“Yes. But—you’re not what you were before. And I think that sometimes you forget that.” I know he doesn’t mean to be cruel. Just the opposite—the love rises up behind his eyes. But his words go deep, remind me of everything I was: Power. Fight. Flight. A maelstrom.
Everything I’m not.
He’s wrong. I never forget. Every single time I see Richard, kiss him, I feel it all: the gain and the loss.
“I love you, Emrys,” he goes on. “I can’t lose you. Not after everything. Promise me you’ll stay safe. Promise me you won’t use your magic like that again.”
I can’t breathe. It’s just like being underwater again. Except there’s no Kelpie. No Thames. Just words jamming my head.
I should promise him this.
But I can’t.
Richard looks at me in that piercing, all-encompassing way of his. Those hazel irises smolder. And I see all of my fear, all of my sadness flung back at me in ghost light.
He knows who I am. He knows I can’t promise.
And still he’s asking.
“You can’t do this to me,” Richard fills my silence. “It’s not fair. I spent hours waiting, not knowing . . .”
“Not fair?” Everything I’ve endured for the past twenty-four hours sweeps back over me. The emptiness of the cell. The horror of Guinevere’s face. The fear of drowning. The anger that I’m not what I was.
And the nightmare—that’s taken all of my feelings, shifted them into the wrong gear.
“Not fair?” My words rage in the dying light. “I just saved your life! I’ve given you everything and you want me to give up more?”
Richard rakes anxious fingers through his hair. His face is crumpled, frowning. “That’s not what I meant—”
“Oh really? Then what did you mean?” My insides are snarl and heat.
Before—when I was power and maelstrom—I always had to bite back my anger. The same way I had to hold back my kisses. For fear of harming Richard in my passion. There’s nothing in my way now. I can unleash all my fury and the Faery light won’t even flicker.
The king doesn’t answer. His face is hidden in his hands.
“I gave up everything for a ghost! You’re never here, Richard. If you’re not at Parliament then you’re at some meeting with Lord Winfred or a hundred different people! But never me!
“Every single day I have to watch the Frithemaeg fly in and out. I have to remember that I can’t. I can’t and you’re gone and it just feels like too much!”
Richard lets out a hot, even breath. “I know things have been crazy. This is the way it has to be, Embers. Just for a while, until Lights-down is firmly established and we have more support in Parliament.”
“And then what? After Lights-down there’s the Reforestation Bill. And after that there will be something else. There will always be something else!”
“We’re creating a new world.” He sounds so solid, unshaken by my verbal cuts. Like he’s too tired to fight. “I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“I wanted us, Richard. Do you realize we haven’t spent an entire day together since I took you to the London Eye? That was over two months ago!”
“Emrys,” his voice turns more serious. “This is my job. My duty. I promised Herne. I gave him my word. For us. So we could be together.”
His words, what he’s saying should make sense. I know this in my head, but my emotions are a snake inside me. Coiling tight, crowding out all logic. I want to make him angry. I want him to fight. Yell. Anything. Anything except sitting there with exhausted, glazed eyes.
So I asked the question I know will cut, dig deep. That kernel of a question Kieran planted in the corner of my mind.
“Is this worth it?”
Richard stares. It takes him a moment to find his voice. It’s still steady. Still flat. “You don’t mean that.”
“Maybe I do! I didn’t give up everything for this!” My arm sweeps through the room. “Not Lights-down or Buckingham or any of it. I gave up my magic for us. For you.”
He closes his eyes. My light is almost out. The Lights-down darkness—so utter and pure—closes in around us.
“You’re not even fighting me.” I can’t tell if I’m yelling or sobbing. Or both. “It’s like you don’t even care.”
“Don’t say that.” His breath is a knife—sharp, edged with pain. “Don’t ever say that.”
“Then do something! Fight me!”
“I can’t!” His yell explodes hot inside my chest.
The Faery light I thought was dead seizes the room. Angry white—bright as toothaches and sunstruck snow—culls out everything: Richard’s knotted jaw and tight, tortured fists, the blood braiding down my arm, the dist
ance between us. We’re both frozen, watching with black-hole eyes as the inlíhte blazes through its second life. Fading . . .
It seems my anger isn’t as safe to express as I thought.
Darkness collapses back over the room.
“Stop,” Richard whispers, his words tangled with fear. “Please stop, Emrys.”
I don’t know if I can. There’s too much inside me. Spinning, hissing. Wanting to lunge, to fight like I always do. I have to get out of here, before I say words I don’t mean. Before I hurt him.
I walk to the door and leave Richard in the dark.
Six
During my first few weeks as a mortal, when sleep was new and impossible, I walked to soothe my insomnia. At first I looped through Buckingham’s halls, but those became rote. Then I started walking the grounds, and later venturing into London’s streets.
Tonight the city is especially barren, with the black cloak of Lights-down draped over its blocks. Streetlamps stand—useless pillars of metal and glass—over parked cars and unlit Underground signs. There’s no roar of the night train under my feet. No growl of traffic in the distance. It’s eerie how silent the city is.
Usually these walks are a way to recharge; my soul thrives on solitude and starlight. But tonight is different. Perhaps it’s the quiet. Or the extra layers of dark. Every step I take feels strung and anxious, like a chase. I don’t know if I’m running from something or to it.
I thought I could slip into a mortal life. That love was worth it all.
But right now this feels like the farthest thing from the truth. Everything inside me is astir. Storm-cloud emotions rise in bits and pieces, like shattered branches caught in a gale.
Weak.
Powerless.
A fire without flame.
You’re not what you were before.
I knew it wouldn’t be easy, giving up my magic. I just didn’t know it would be this hard.
The windows I pass are lit with lantern glow, like jack-o’-lanterns queued up for All Hallows’ Eve. They gleam and grin, offering glimpses inside. A family plays a board game around an oil lamp. A couple drinks red wine at their dining room table, gazing at each other over candlelight.
Normal, happy lives. Never knowing anything else. I envy them. Their flightless, dull, coffee-drinking existence. They don’t have to live with the ache of being grounded.
I walk and walk. Feel every step.
The Thames appears. Its waters whisper by. I try to imagine how Richard felt, staring, waiting for me to resurface.
A thousand hells. That’s how he described it. I know how it feels. I felt the scorch the moment Mab’s blade broke through Richard’s belly and he died in my arms. The moment I was far more broken than I am now.
Everything I’ve lost, I’ve lost for him.
Richard is enough. He has to be.
Something catches the corner of my eye. A glare too harsh for stars or flame, arching electric across the river. Dozens of lights strung over Westminster Bridge.
It’s a parade: people marching with signs and electric torches. The night’s quiet is shredded by their voices. There’s a rhythm to them, punching like drumbeats.
“Shut down Lights-down! Shut down Lights-down!”
There can’t be more than two hundred of them, but their yells are loud, piercing. They rattle the asphalt at my feet. Every scream threads needle sharp through my bones.
I stay still next to the dark lamppost. The crowd slides by like a funeral wake. Their signs stab the air.
GIVE UP POWER, BECOME POWERLESS!
DON’T DRAG US BACK INTO THE DARK AGES.
GO BACK TO HELL, MONSTERS!
Monsters.
Before it had only been a quote in a newspaper. The feeling behind Elaine Forsythe’s glance. But here, in front of the Palace of Westminster, it rages. So sharp, so real.
Do you really think the mortals will let you into their world? That you can become one of them just by giving up some spells? Kieran’s questions rise up, color the night.
I’ve hoped. I’ve believed in the golden age of Camelot—that what happened once can happen again. That human and Fae can exist together. That my past and my future don’t have to be at war.
But Guinevere dreamed that same dream.
I’m standing too close. I think this just as a protestor looks over his shoulder. His eyes carve through the dark, land straight on my lamppost.
I will him to pass by, but there are no more veiling spells left in me. The man stops; recognition glints through his eyes. He calls back to the others with a slapping yell, “Hey! That’s her! She’s the one who spelled the king!”
The air burns with danger. Dozens of stares and lights turn toward me. Root out my hiding place. I’ve never been afraid of mortals before. But there’s something about this crowd which tells me to run.
So I do.
A chunk of the protest breaks away, hounding me with footsteps and yells. I dash down the sidewalk, around the statue of the warrior queen Boudica in her chariot. The mortals’ lights blaze up behind me. Just ahead I catch a snag of crimson and blue, the edge of an unmoving escalator. An entrance to the Underground.
I swing around, feet skidding against cool asphalt as I head for the sign. I don’t know why I’m running. Why they’re chasing me. Or what they’ll do when they catch me.
My fingers grip hard onto the edge of the escalator. I take the steps in leaps and bounds. Push faster, harder than I’m afraid this mortal body can take. Just as I reach the final step the first torch swings down, fills my world with harsh, terrible light.
I’m trapped.
The Underground’s entrance is shut, laced over with a metal grating. I shake it hard, even though I know it won’t open. My insides feel gutted, but I scream the spell anyway: “Opena! Opena!”
Nothing. No magic, no power. Just the cold, hard rattle of the grating. The sound of dozens of feet racing down dead escalators.
“She’s trying to do magic!” someone screams. “Get her!”
The lights are halfway down the stairs, beams stabbing my eyes. They sweep closer, closer. I brace myself against the grating. Metal diamonds press hard into my back. The meat-voiced man is almost to the last step. Eyes made of flint as he reaches out.
At the last moment I switch and duck. He falls hard into the grating, but there are more hands behind him. More eyes. They flash from all corners.
Someone grabs my dress. I turn to push them away and another hand grips my hair. Too many. There are too many. More hands shove me back into the grating. There are yells everywhere, crowding my ears with anger and hate. But then another sound rises, cuts through them all. A howl. Pure and powerful.
The metal at my back gives way, crumples against the Black Dog’s magic. The creature bursts out of the tunnels, bristling in front of the torches. It’s a massive spirit, too large to squeeze into the space of the escalators, where the crowd is now screaming, clawing their way back up to the streets. It snarls, lichen-yellow teeth gnashing.
That aura. I recognize it. There’s only one Black Dog which scavenges the tunnels near Westminster Bridge.
“Blæc,” I whisper the creature’s name. Its ears prick, head twists around to where I’m sprawled over the broken gate. Those eyes sear like a nightmare. Yellow and so very hungry.
“How do you know my name?” the creature rumbles.
We’ve met before, Blæc and I. But there’s no point in telling the dog this, since I wiped its memory after the fact. “I am . . . was . . . one of the Frithemaeg.”
“Frithemaeg?” The beast sniffs at the air. Whatever it smells makes it growl. “No . . . Something different. Something tasty.”
Human prey has been scarce in the months of the integration. Most soul feeders have retreated to morgues and funeral homes, living like vultures off the already dead. But some, like Blæc, have stayed in their territories. Slowly starving.
I crawl backward, and the Black Dog edges closer, eyes and teeth fluorescent
. Leering like a demon.
A monster.
Maybe the mortals are right.
“Blæc,” I say its name again. “Please.”
“I’m huuuuungrrrry.” The beast’s syllables stretch out in a soft howl, crooning.
The escalator is too far away. There’s no way I’ll make it without stumbling. Without Blæc’s dagger teeth sinking into my calves.
The Black Dog leans in. Its breath curdles up my nose: hot decay. Saliva strings down, drips against my cheek. I shut my eyes and wait for the dive. The teeth.
It never comes.
The gate rattles under my back as Blæc steps away. A long, low growl leaks through the dog’s teeth, mixed with hints of words. “Can’t . . . not yet . . . won’t let me eat . . . sooooo huuuungrrrry . . .”
I open my eyes just in time to see Blæc’s tail melt back into the shadows of the Underground. I sit still on top of the mangled metal, afraid to move. Afraid this miracle will not hold.
Yet it does. Blæc is gone. The crowd too. All that’s left is a heavy, harsh silence.
It doesn’t make sense. Black Dogs are killers—cold and cruel—not known for sparing prey. Especially when they’re so hungry. For the second time in twenty-four hours, I should be dead.
Richard’s right. I’m not what I was before. My life has become fragile, so easily snuffed. I have to start treating it that way.
My fingers clench hard against my ring.
There’s only one reason I chose this life. Only one person who’s worth it.
It’s time to return to him.
The fire is back. Richard stares straight into the candelabra’s shine—three pinpoints of light dancing in his dark eyes. My legs tremble as I run to the settee. To him. Neither of us says a word as we fold into each other’s arms. I bury my face into his neck, soak in the warm solid of his embrace.
One of the many things I almost lost.
“Emrys, I’m so sorry.” Richard’s apology rumbles through me. His arms tighten. “I do care. More than anything. The thought of losing you scares me shitless. But that’s no excuse. I never should’ve asked you to promise those things.”