All That Burns

  Another moment passes. The Ad-hene’s hand falls away. He bends down and picks up his unfinished jar of beetroots. “The princess is scared too. You shouldn’t punish her for your own choice. Your own fears. She deserves to know who she is.”

  His words smudge inside me, leave marks like charcoal alongside the prickles his touch left. I hate them, wish I could erase them all.

  “Go and make things right.” Kieran holds his fork like a knife hilt—all fist and awkward stab. The beetroot looks dark and bleeding as he plucks it from the jar, holds it to his stone lips. “Before someone gets hurt.”

  Sixteen

  A quick search tells me that Anabelle isn’t in the house. The front door’s dead bolt is unlocked, and her hoodie is gone from the coatrack. I don’t have enough magic left to follow her aura, but I brave the streets anyway.

  My stride is angry. Smarting hands turned fists are shoved into my jacket pockets. Streetlamps pool like halos on the sidewalk. I skirt their light altogether, keep to the shadows.

  I leave Kieran behind in the house, but the Ad-hene’s silver-dart words haunt my every step. Knifing my insides with perfect slice and accuracy.

  You’re a fire without flame.

  You shouldn’t punish the princess for your own choice.

  Is it worth his death?

  Afraid. Alone. You don’t have to be.

  Cut, cut, bleed. Every word hits its mark. Why does the truth hurt so much? What is it about Kieran that makes me question everything?

  As much as I hate to admit it, the Ad-hene is right. I can’t shield the princess from the force growing inside her. I can’t bind her with promises she can’t keep.

  It’s time to tell her why I’m afraid.

  Tree limbs reach like skeleton hands into the night sky. Bony twigs grasping at where the stars should be. They still aren’t out, even in the utter darkness. There are too many lights tonight, too much haze for even the winter constellations to pierce through.

  Once I round the corner I find out why.

  The fires on the screen, springing up from the crowds. An oil barrel sits in the middle of the street, stuffed full of snapped branches and wads of newspaper. People huddle around it, cheering as a limp, crude effigy is staked into the middle of the barrel.

  I’ve seen this tradition before. Every year on the fifth of November the mortals gather around fires with beer and song. Every year they watch the likeness of Guy Fawkes crumble to ash in front of them.

  But never in those four hundred years have I seen an effigy with such long, red hair.

  I keep to the dark, watch as the first match is struck, tossed into the barrel. People cheer as the paper catches, roars with orange and light. The flames fan and the song starts. A hum which rises and roars. Just like the fire eating away my likeness.

  Remember, remember the fifth of November

  The Gunpowder Treason and plot

  I know of no reason why Gunpowder Treason

  Should ever be forgot

  Someone grabs my arm. I try to yank away, try to fight, but it’s not some random bystander from the crowd.

  It’s Anabelle.

  “The fires are everywhere,” she says.

  We stand in silence and shadows. Watching the bonfire’s fury stab through the smoke. Up, up. Close to the claw of the trees.

  “I haven’t been completely open with you, Belle.” I stare hard at the barrel’s glowing coals. “Kieran’s right. I’m scared, but not because you’ll have magic and I won’t. It’s bigger than that.”

  Anabelle pulls me farther from the streetlamps and flames. Where we can watch without being watched. “So what happened? Why are you afraid of mortals’ magic?”

  “Emotions are a powerful source. The magic which springs from them is just as strong. Most Fae are indifferent. Emotions don’t come naturally to us—them,” I correct myself. “It wasn’t until I met your brother that I really understood the power of emotions. They’re strong, but they’re also shaky. Unpredictable. When you base magic on something like that . . .”

  “It can go wrong,” the princess finishes my sentence for me.

  “It’s like fire.” I nod at the oil drum. “You think you have it under control, but one flare, one slip, and suddenly you’re the one who’s trapped.

  “In my early days, magic wasn’t a foreign thing to mortals. They’d lived among Fae for many years. The more ambitious ones watched and learned. But they could only perform magic with the help of channeling instruments. Potions, staffs, amulets, sacrifices. The spells they performed were small things: healings, divination, luck work. Too small for anyone to notice the consequences of emotion.

  “But a few mortals delved deeper into the art. Arthur and Merlin were among these. They discovered a way to bind magic inside a mortal’s veins, so they could cast spells without a channeling device. It’s one of the reasons Arthur’s kingdom became so great.”

  “Of course,” Anabelle says. “Everyone knows Camelot.”

  I go on. “The mortals held the king in awe because he worked magic like a Fae. The Fae held him in awe because his magic was so different from ours. Different yet just as strong. When Arthur asked us to become his allies—to protect him and his people from immortal threats in exchange for access to the blood magic’s energy—we agreed. The Frithemaeg fought many battles at his side. Camelot grew and the Pendragon’s name became known in many lands.

  “But we started to notice how his magic wavered. The strength of Arthur’s magic fed off the strength of his heart. Spells he cast when he was happy were vastly different from the same spells he cast in anger or fear. For the most part he learned how to control it. He kept his emotions in check, didn’t work magic when he was too upset. But some emotions are too strong, too overwhelming to avoid. They consume you.”

  I take another breath. Smoke chokes the air, snakes down in my lungs.

  “The very first time Arthur Pendragon visited Queen Mab’s court he met a Fae. They fell in love and she gave up her magic and immortality to be with him.”

  “Guinevere,” Anabelle breathes out the name like a secret. The spook of the Labyrinth still glimmers through her eyes. Makes her shoulders hunch. “She was like you.”

  Like me. The only soul in the world like me. The thought leaves a rotten taste on my tongue—white eyes and ashes, black blades and iron bars.

  I swallow past it. “Guinevere became Arthur’s queen. It was easy to see the love between them, even for Fae. We could feel how the emotion fed Arthur’s magic, made him stronger. You could see it in Guinevere too. When she was around Arthur she almost seemed to glow. . . .”

  Like me. I can’t get the taste out of my mouth because these ashes are real. Flame and ruin flake the sidewalk.

  “But then she ran away with Lancelot?” Anabelle prods me on. “Just like in the stories?”

  I nod. “It never quite made sense. One day she was laughing and happy in Arthur’s arms, the next she rode away with his best knight. When Arthur found out about Guinevere’s affair, he broke. His heart was shattered and his magic started spiraling out of control. There were earthquakes, fires, floods. Camelot started coming apart at the seams. It wasn’t even a day before Mordred—a great sorcerer from the north—invaded with his armies.” I shudder, can’t help but think of the dream. “It all happened so fast. We didn’t even have time to summon Mab and the other Fae. Mordred and his men swarmed the valley and burned everything. Arthur fought, but he was too defeated at heart. His magic failed him, and the Frithemaeg were too few to face the sorcerer’s armies, so the Pendragon fell.

  “For years there was no king. No crown. Sorcerers and magicians divided the land. Fought like wolves. It was pure anarchy. Mab commanded the Fae into hiding, so mortals would forget about magic.

  “Time did its work. Generations passed. Mortals died and the art of their magic with them. New kings and queens sat on Albion’s throne, carried the inheritance of Arthur’s blood magic in their veins without knowing it. We gua
rded them as we promised Arthur we would and drew energy from the blood magic. All the way to you and Richard.”

  “And now we’re back where it all started. Fae and mortals together.” Anabelle looks down at her palms. They’re pale and shaking in the November cold. “My magic . . . it’s just like Arthur’s. Whenever I get stressed or angry or happy, that’s when I feel it the most. That’s when it’s strongest.”

  “Do you understand now?” I ask. “Why I asked you not to use it?”

  “You’re scared I’ll get too strong, that I’ll lose control like Arthur.” Anabelle frowns at me. Her eyes are twin pools of dark in the shelter of her hoodie. “But I don’t think it matters. Sometimes the magic just spills out, like with the ink and the vase. I can’t not use it. I’ve been trying, but it’s hard. And after everything you just told me . . . what if the little accidents get worse? It was just a vase at Windsor, but what if next time it’s a window? Or a building?”

  It will keep rising, whether you show her how to harness it or not.

  “Wouldn’t it be better if someone would teach me? So I at least have some chance of control from the start? Kieran—”

  The Ad-hene’s name is like a needle’s point, sharp, provoking an instant reaction. “Kieran has spent his entire existence in the Labyrinth. He has no idea how mortals’ magic works.”

  Anabelle’s lips press together, turn almost as white as her hands.

  “Well, even if he doesn’t, you do,” she says after a moment. “Emrys. You used magic. And you’re a mortal now. You could teach me.”

  She’s not wrong. I could teach her. But it’s bad enough having Kieran’s spells to taunt me with the old ways. Luring me back to an impossible choice I’m trying my hardest to avoid. I’m not completely sure I could resist the force of the princess’s spells too.

  “Besides,” she says, “if I learn some spells, I can help you and Kieran find Richard.”

  “You’ve done plenty, Belle.”

  Her glare creeps ghoul-like out of her hoodie. Ominous and unnerving.

  “Honest. We wouldn’t have come this far without you. Where would we be without your sailing? Your awful driving? Your chocolate soufflés?”

  She laughs, but then her face returns instantly to seriousness. “But that’s not really doing something. All this time I’ve been dragged along like some kind of accessory. I hate feeling helpless.”

  I swallow, keep staring at the coals. They burn like her words.

  How much of my fear stems from Camelot? How much of it is my own weakness returning to haunt me?

  “Emrys, I know you’d do anything for my brother. And I will too. If this magic inside me can help us find Richard, then I have to try. I’m good at controlling things. I’ve done it my whole life. Controlling my image, my grades, every word I say in public. I know I was angry back at the house, but I can manage it. Now that I know. I’ll just pretend like I’m at an eternal press conference.”

  Anabelle is right. For as long as I’ve known her, she’s been the model of togetherness. Controlled even in the worst situations.

  Kieran is right too. Anabelle’s magic will grow whether she’s taught to use it or not. It won’t go away just because I tried to ignore it.

  My silence stretches out, pushes the princess into more words. “Remember Trafalgar Square? I held my magic back when you asked me to. I controlled it. I can do this, Emrys. I have to.”

  All of a sudden my thoughts flash back to the edge of Lord Winfred’s yacht. When the Kelpie roiled the waters below and Richard’s fingers sank into my shoulder, begging me to stay. Trying to stop the inevitable.

  Anabelle knows the danger. She still wants to jump. . . . Who am I to stop her?

  “Fine,” I exhale. “We’ll try. But just for little things. Like veiling spells. If you even show a teensy sign of losing control, we stop. If you get anywhere close to being as angry as you were just now . . .”

  The princess bites her lip. “Emrys . . . do you remember, back in the prison? How Kieran described that magic?”

  Her question catches me by surprise. Unexpected. All I remember are Guinevere’s howls. How she choked and frothed and stabbed her own nails into her throat. How her riddles were layered with riddles.

  “He said it was angry.” Her eyes widen, drink in more of the distant firelight. “Angry. What if this prisoner who escaped isn’t a Fae at all? What if they’re mortal?”

  Her words spin and scatter like marbles in my head. I try to make sense of them, try to gather them all back into a perfect formation. “That’s not possible.”

  “Why not? Guinevere’s still alive.”

  I argue that it’s not the same, but I realize the princess is on to something. Guinevere should have died. Every other faagailagh did. If a looped spell has kept her alive this long, then why not some other mortal?

  “It makes sense, doesn’t it?” Anabelle asks. “That’s why Titania thinks it was just mortals who took Richard. And why Protection Command is accusing the Fae.”

  Not magic or mortal. Magic and mortal. A dangerous, brilliant hybrid.

  That’s why the magic felt so different. So strange. That’s how magic and mortal mixed, worked together to make Richard disappear in the middle of a crowd.

  It makes sense. But pieces of the puzzle are still missing. Who was this mortal, locked away in a prison for the Fae? Why would they, just weeks after escaping the Labyrinth, want to kidnap a king they know nothing about?

  “It’s someone Guinevere knows.” The princess seems to be talking to herself now. Mumbling. “Someone you know. She said it herself!”

  The flames in the oil barrel are dying now. My effigy didn’t feed them for very long. The crowd doesn’t seem to notice. They’re still passing around bottles. Still singing: Remember, remember . . .

  Someone I know. A mortal who worked magic in the age of Camelot.

  “Magic was more common in those days,” I say. “It could be anyone. Lancelot. Arthur’s sister. Merlin. Mordred. Arthur’s knights. Arthur himself.”

  “You think King Arthur is still alive?” Anabelle’s eyebrows rise.

  “No.” I remember how Mordred’s blade slid through the cracks of Arthur’s armor, so dark I couldn’t even see the king’s blood on its edge. It was the last time I ever laid eyes on the Pendragon, before I flew back to Mab’s court, delivered her the ill news. When I returned, Camelot was razed. A field of bodies gutted and gone.

  “So the legend about the Lady of the Lake taking him away to Avalon so he can rise again when Britain needs him isn’t true?”

  The mortals’ stories of Camelot have changed so much over the years, taken on hundreds of forms. Anabelle’s is a hopeful twist. Something for desperate mortals to cling to in final hours. But I think of how many final hours this kingdom has been through: wars and plagues and famines. So many countless times where people were beyond hope.

  “He would have returned by now, don’t you think?”

  The song carries on around us, notes growing sloppier with each beer glass shattered on the ground. Voices grow rowdy with alcohol. God save the King! God save the King! This chorus becomes a chant, edged riot-hot. It makes every hair on my arm bristle.

  “We should go back,” Anabelle says with a shiver.

  They’re bringing out another effigy as we walk away. Her hair is fire itself under the slants of the streetlight. Even before they set the match to it.

  Seventeen

  I stand in front of the mirror. Stare at the lava locks which have been a part of me for so long. Swirling all the way down my shoulders. I twist my fingers around the ends, the way Richard used to whenever we sat close.

  A dead giveaway. I knew this even before Anabelle said it. Before my cap tumbled off in Trafalgar Square and the color poured out for the world to see. Before the citizens of London taped it to stick dolls and doused it in petrol.

  Yet I still held on.

  I can’t keep it. Not when every eye in London is searching for it. Wai
ting for a veiling spell to slip. A cap to slide off.

  “It’s just hair,” I say into the mirror. But the girl there doesn’t look convinced. Her knuckles clench tight around the strands. As if I have to fight her for it.

  Kieran offered his transformation spell again, but I couldn’t stand the thought of his magic sliding in. Touching. Making me want. Changing things already on the brink of collapse.

  Anabelle offered to cut it. She even hunted down a box of dye in one of Bridget’s cabinets. But this is something I have to do myself.

  The girl in the mirror lets go, the hair unwinds, falling from her fingers. I grab the scissors from the washroom counter, start to cut. Chunk by chunk it comes away. Pieces of me fall to the floor like red, red snow.

  I try not to look at this pile, try not to think of what else—who else—I might have to give up, before the end of all this.

  I cut, cut, cut. Until there’s more hair covering the floor tiles than my head. It ends sharply, just below my jawline. With a fringe which hangs all the way down to my eyes.

  It’s not enough.

  I set the scissors down, pick up the box of dye.

  In the end, black is everywhere. Black like raven’s wings. Black like shadows in the corners no one notices. It drips down the edges of the sink, stains the towel around my neck.

  A stranger stares out through the glass. A different Emrys.

  Everything changes.

  I tear off my gloves, toss them in the rubbish bin. One of the glove’s fingers had a nick in it, so the dye bled through, glossed over the jade of my ring. My heart is heavy and fast as I thrust my hand under the running faucet, scrub against the ink stains with a vengeance.

  Water and silver blur together and suddenly my finger is weightless. It takes me a moment to realize why, to see the ring Richard gave me sliding down the marble basin. Glimmering green just before it’s swallowed down the drain.

  “No!” I turn off the faucet, claw at the stopper, gut it.

  But my ring—that memory of starlit moments and Richard’s promise—doesn’t shine out of the black. I hover still for a moment over the sink; my heart tries its best not to stop.