by Ryan Graudin
Not just a warning this time.
Outside Blæc keeps howling. Ferrin keeps shouting questions I can’t hear. I stare at the birdsfoot trefoil. Try to understand why it’s here and Richard isn’t.
“Lady Emrys!!” Ferrin pulls in front of me so that her wide blue eyes are the only thing I see. “The king! Where is he?”
“Gone.” One word is all it takes to realize and cement the truth. Richard is gone. And there was nothing I could do to stop it.
The Black Dog is closer now, just outside the window. The carriage shudders against its howling spells. The flower tumbles off the cushion.
“We have to get out of here. Now.” The Fae’s fingers tighten around my wrist. Pull.
I stumble forward, crush the birdsfoot trefoil under my heel. The carriage lurches just when we reach the door, leap out.
There’s an earth-shattering crash as the carriage keels onto the road. I look over my shoulder and see the Black Dog writhing on top of what used to be the Gold State Coach. The soul feeder twists and flails over the coronation carriage—all magic and weight. Crushing it the same way my heel just demolished the flower.
How easy it is for beautiful things to be destroyed.
We run until my high heels snap and my feet bleed. It doesn’t matter how far we go: Blæc’s howls still cling to my ears. Visions of black masks and white terrycloth crowd my mind. And through it all, one awful, horrifying thought.
Richard is gone. Gone. Gonegonegone.
Suddenly I’m not running anymore. I’m leaning into Ferrin’s sharp shoulder, staring through the wide arch of Westminster Abbey’s west doors. Thousands of eyes stare back. Cameras flash and click. The Abbey comes alive with gasps, whispers.
We shouldn’t have come here. I want to turn and tell the youngling this, but it’s too late. We’re here and the cameras are flashing—capturing every detail of my broken heels, this shattered day.
“Your Majesty!” Ferrin’s call arcs into the vaulted ceiling, slices through the slants of colored window light.
Titania stands. And Anabelle with her. It’s like a dream, the way they turn and walk the wrong way down the aisle. Their steps are measured, silent against the crimson carpet runner. The whole world watches them pass.
Richard’s mother follows them both, her lips and steps both tighter than a letterpress. Embedded with deeply written panic. The same anxiety lurks under Anabelle’s face—novels of it scrawled under pristine makeup. The princess stares at me with pleading eyes, and it’s like I’m back in Herne’s wood—with the damp leaves and Breena’s shattered body and Anabelle asking me over and over where her brother is. And me: not knowing. Not being able to voice the horrible truth.
Gone.
This time, I have to tell her.
Ever since I unveiled to the mortals, Richard’s mother has made it a point not to acknowledge my existence, much less my relationship status with her son. For months I’ve stood in the same room as Queen Cecilia without so much as a glance. But she’s staring now, and her eyes are nuclear.
“What did you do to my son?” The church snatches and radiates her words—a fallout for the whole crowd to hear.
“Mum.” Anabelle’s voice is low, as solid as the stone pillars which brace the Abbey’s roof. “Not here.”
“Come, we’ll speak in private.” Titania turns and starts walking. We follow the wake of her gossamer gown like ducklings. Along the back wall, through a series of corners and doors which swing open at the Faery queen’s command. Into the shelter of the Abbey’s back rooms.
It’s not until the final door swings shut and its lock slides into place that Ferrin speaks.
“There’s a Black Dog loose in Trafalgar Square. I don’t know how it evaded our perimeter. The mortals caught sight of it and panicked. We left to take care of it.” The youngling pauses. I notice her chin is trembling. “When I returned to the coach the king was gone.”
Her revelation falls heavy. Crowds the room. Even Titania looks stunned. It’s easy to see how just this small time in London has drained her. How even with all the changes brought by Lights-down she’ll have to leave the city soon, or else risk Mab’s fate.
Queen Cecilia reacts first. Her eyes are still fastened to me, sharp and biting. “This is your fault. I told Richard over and over again you weren’t safe but he was too infatuated to listen—”
“Mum, stop being ridiculous. You’re not helping anything,” Anabelle says. For someone who just had a panic attack over flower arrangements she’s eerily calm. “What do they mean, Emrys?”
“They took him . . .” It doesn’t feel like I’m the one talking, but it’s my voice. Faint and brittle, yet still mine. “Men in masks. I tried to fight them . . .”
But I couldn’t.
Weak. Powerless. Fire without flame.
Richard. Gone.
“Men?” Titania’s eyebrows dive into a silver V. “Mortals did this?”
Mortals. They were mortals, weren’t they? The thought startles me. I hadn’t felt any magic in their fight. Their touch. If they’d had any powers, they wouldn’t have used chemicals and cloth.
But Blæc. The dreams. The twinge of magic I felt just seconds before the world fell into hell . . . those couldn’t have been just a coincidence.
Could they?
The door at Queen Titania’s back shudders with the pounding of fists. The handle twists and when that doesn’t give way there’s a fierce yell. “PROTECTION COMMAND! OPEN THE DOOR!”
“I felt magic”—I stumble over my words—“just before they took him . . . before the Black Dog appeared.”
“Ferrin. Stay here.” The Faery queen strides across the room, toward the many-paned windows. The glass warps when she draws close, melting around the contours of her body. “I’ll go to Trafalgar Square with the rest of the Guard. Do what I can.”
The door groans. Titania is all the way through the window when the old lock splinters. The royals’ bodyguards pile into the room. There are two I recognize: Jensen and Eric. But even more crowd behind, hands clenched around their weapons. Not guns, but stun guns. The entire room is alight—singeing with bastardly blue light, razing electricity.
Every single, crackling edge of every stun gun is aimed at Ferrin.
“Your Majesties.” Jensen sidesteps to Richard’s sister and mother. “There’s been a security breach. We need you both to come with us.”
All of them are dressed in black. The sight catches me. I can’t stop looking at the sapphire stun guns, how Eric has his leveled straight between Ferrin’s blue eyes, ready to strike. Electricity: the only weapon a mortal has against a Fae.
It’s almost as if they planned for this to happen.
The charges aren’t touching her, but they’re close enough to feed the youngling’s sickness. Ferrin doubles over, hands folded over her stomach, where nausea is about to overflow.
Queen Cecilia’s arm hooks into her daughter’s. “Let’s go, dear.”
Anabelle stays rooted next to me, swallowing the scene. The buzz of a dozen stun guns dances like fireflies in her eyes. “Officer Jensen, what’s going on?”
“Your Highness, your brother has disappeared from the coronation coach. We have reason to believe magical creatures were involved—”
“You think we did this?” Ferrin breaks in, panting through her illness. “We’re King Richard’s Frithemaeg! We’re sworn to protect him!”
“Quiet!” Eric snaps at the Fae and shoves his stun gun closer. Beads of sweat dew her brow as she fights the growing sick.
Jensen keeps speaking as if nothing happened. “Our orders are to take you and your mother to a safe location.”
Our orders. His words make the hairs on the back of my neck stand alert. That’s what the masked man had said, standing over me in the coronation coach.
I try to feel for magic, any trace of it. But I sense nothing. These men are clean. Then again, so were the men behind the masks. Just because I don’t feel it, doesn’t mean it isn
’t there. There’s so much I can’t sense anymore . . . now that I’m mortal.
But I do feel Ferrin’s aura tensing, rallying itself against the stun gun charges, piecing together a spell.
“Ferrin,” I say her name, my voice heavy with warning.
“Put the guns away.” None of the anxiety I saw beneath Anabelle’s makeup comes through her voice as she looks at Eric. “Ferrin is my Frithemaeg. My guard. Same as you are.”
“Apologies, Your Highness, but it’s not your call,” Jensen tells her firmly.
Across the room Ferrin’s magic flares, brimming almost over the edge.
“Ferrin, don’t! You’ll only make it worse,” I say before she can release the spell. I turn to Jensen, look straight into his eyes. Try to remember if I’ve seen them before under a ski mask. They’re a plain, unmemorable color. “Ferrin will stay. I go with you.”
“Of course you’re coming!” Anabelle says. “Why wouldn’t you?”
The bodyguard in front of us clears his throat. His stare slides out of mine, refusing to look at me when he says these words, “Princess, Lady Emrys was in the same coach when the king disappeared.”
“You think she was a part of this?” Anabelle pauses, takes the whole room in—the buzzing lights and bristling black suits—and steps closer to me, twisting her free hand into mine. “You’re wrong. Emrys would never do anything to hurt Richard. Never.”
“Your Majesty—these creatures—they’re not like us.” It’s Eric who’s speaking this time. He’s still holding the stun gun high, glaring at Ferrin’s flawless snowflake skin through its neon blue sear. “They have powers of persuasion. They can make you believe what they want.”
“Emrys wouldn’t. She wouldn’t.” With every steel-coated word she says, the princess grips my hand tighter. Her touch holds all of the room’s tension, the clash of electricity and magic, building and warring and ready to explode. “She even tried to get me to stop the coronation this morning!”
“Is that so?” Jensen’s eyes flick across the room, skate over Eric and the others. I don’t need magic to read the meanings behind their glances. The subtle change in their body movement. Eric’s stun gun is still latched toward Ferrin, but his eyes drift toward me. Glint suspicion.
I stare back—eyes green and just as glinting.
“Enough of this, Anabelle.” Queen Cecilia is still trying to reel her daughter across the room. “I’ve lost a husband and a son to these creatures. I’m not going to lose you too. Let’s go with these officers.”
Anabelle jerks her arm out of her mother’s and sidles even closer to me. The edges of our dresses—mint silk and white—pool together on the floor. “I go with Emrys or I don’t go at all.”
Jensen’s unremarkable eyes study me—all questions and calculations. Trying to judge the risk. The reward.
“Fine,” he says, and waves both of us forward. “Let’s go.”
The room unwinds all at once. Stun guns fall to officers’ sides; Ferrin sighs with relief and sick. Anabelle’s grip loosens in mine, but she keeps holding on as the tide of officers pulls us out the door. I follow, dragged and straggling like seaweed, into the unknown.
Ten
Anabelle doesn’t let go of my hand. Her grip is just tight enough to make my fingers tingle. By the time we reach the underground bunker I can’t feel anything at all. Yet while my flesh grows numb, my insides become anything but. They’re churning and undone. Jolted by each and every pothole the Protection Command officers speed over in their black Jaguar.
My thoughts are on fire, gathering all the pieces of this day, trying to arrange them in a way which makes sense. Yellow flowers. Blood dripping from Blæc’s teeth. Masks and men. Our orders. That sharp taste of magic in the crowd.
No matter how hard I try, the pieces don’t fit. If it was a magical creature which wanted to take the king, then why wouldn’t it show itself in full force? Why bother with mortals in masks? And if it was humans—the M.A.F. or some other group—then how was it I felt that magic? How did they capture and control a creature as fierce as Blæc?
Which leaves me with the same awful questions as before: Who would take Richard? And why was I left behind?
Jensen leads us through the thick steel doors. The bunker is so well pieced together I’d never even suspect it was underground. The room Anabelle, Queen Cecilia, and I end up in has some of the same fineries as the palace: settees and plush rugs. An oak table with a tea tray offering. There’s even a television screen half the size of the wall it hangs on.
Ferrin followed us here, as I knew she would. The youngling’s outline appears, as wavering as a desert mirage, as she sheds a layer of her veiling spell. Allowing only me to see her, so I know she hasn’t abandoned her post.
“Make yourself comfortable, Your Majesties.” Jensen gestures to the closest seat. “We’re going to be here for a while. I’ll have Rita bring all of you a change of clothes.”
Richard’s mother doesn’t sit down. She takes a few steps into the bunker and turns to Jensen, her movements snapping and precise. “What’s being done to find my son?”
Jensen’s mouth drops open; his eyes dart over to me. In them I see hesitance—some of Eric’s fear—as if my presence is the only reason he’s staying silent. “Everything we can, Your Majesty. Officer Black will stay here with you. If I hear anything, I’ll send him an update.”
All three of us watch as Jensen walks out. Eric stares back from his post by the door. His arms are crossed over his chest, so both of his holsters are in easy reach: stun gun and real gun.
I feel him watching, deciding which one he would use on me. If it came to it.
The princess lets go of my hand and moves over to the settee. She falls into the cushion, her fingers pinching the bridge of her delicate nose. Holding everything together.
It’s too late for me. The numb is wearing off and I’m in fragments. Like the coronation carriage. Like the vase at Windsor. Splintered, jagged, everywhere and nowhere all at once.
“Is this what you wanted?” Queen Cecilia has no place else to aim her wasteland eyes and words. “Was your little summer fling worth this?”
Anabelle leans forward, hair veiling her face. Her fingers vise her head now, as if she’s fighting back a headache. “Mum, stop. For the last time, Emrys didn’t do this.”
But I did. Didn’t I? Richard’s mother is right. This is my fault, in so many ways. If I’d never unveiled myself to Richard in the first place, never fallen in love, never sacrificed my magic . . .
I could have stopped the men in the carriage with a flick of my palm.
I could have saved him.
“Then who did?” Queen Cecilia asks at me, point-blank.
“I don’t know.” I make a point to look at Eric as I say this and take a seat beside the princess. “None of this makes any sense. . . .”
Was it magic or mortal that stole Richard?
Or both?
Both is what the signs point to. But that’s impossible. How could there be an immortal-human alliance we knew nothing about? And why would they want to kidnap Richard, a leader who’s giving his life to champion their success?
There has to be a way this puzzle fits together. There has to be some piece I’m missing.
Anabelle’s question is tight and tamped. “Do you think Queen Titania will find something?”
“Of course,” I answer. She has to. That magic was too distinct. There’s no way I imagined it. No way it wouldn’t leave a trail for a Fae as powerful and seasoned as Titania. “She’ll find a trail. She’ll get him back.”
She has to. Because she’s the only one who can.
Time feels like an impossibility down here in this bunker. I don’t know if hours or days have passed under these lights. I only know that the pot of tea has long stopped steaming and Anabelle is slouched asleep against my shoulder. Queen Cecilia has drifted off as well. Even Ferrin is quiet and wordless, static in her potted-palm corner.
I’m tired to
o, but shutting my eyes is impossible. I can’t take the dreams. Not now. Instead I stare at the television’s dead screen and try not to wonder what’s happening to Richard.
“Lady Emrys.”
My head snaps up to find Queen Titania standing in the middle of the room. There’s less shine than usual radiating from her hair, her skin—the fluorescent bulbs wash her out, reveal just how much London’s technology has been eating through her. She’s been away from Anabelle’s blood magic for too long: swiftly waning. If she doesn’t leave for the Highlands soon, the nausea in her stomach will become bloody lungs. And then . . .
Madness.
Hundreds of questions start to climb up my throat. But then I see Eric watching from his chair, hands lingering close to his holsters.
“I can’t stay long, even with Anabelle here,” Titania says. “I don’t have much energy left and the veiling spell is taking its toll, but I wanted to tell you in person.”
Tell me what? I swallow the question back. Now I know how Richard felt all those times I unveiled myself to only him.
The thought of him is agony and lightning in my heart.
“I went to Trafalgar Square. Did a thorough sweep with the rest of the Guard and questioned the Black Dog. The creature was delirious with hunger. The crowd drew it out. It’s little wonder this one braved broad daylight; it hasn’t fed in weeks.”
I frown, remembering the savageness which rolled down Blæc’s breath. How the dog turned away, let me live. It seemed like a miracle at the time, but was it something different . . . something more?
If the Black Dog was simply hungry, why break Titania’s laws in the most visible place? And why was there only one? How did it get through the parade’s intense security measures without detection? The path had been well guarded, by both Fae and mortal.
More puzzle pieces. Refusing to fit.
“I searched for traces of the magic you say you felt . . .” The queen’s phrase hangs by a thread. “There’s no trail, Lady Emrys. There’s . . . nothing. Trafalgar Square is clean.”
Nothing. No trail. Gone.
“That’s impossible.” The whisper pulls out of me before I can catch it.