All That Glows

Sixteen

I spend the next three days in surveillance, watching the other Fae, noting their every move. But even after so much watching, I have nothing to report back to Mab. If the Old One has an agent, they’re craftier than a few days of observation can uncover.

At twilight on the third day, I return to Richard.

He isn’t in Buckingham Palace. The unmistakable gravity of his aura pulls me to a pub two blocks off of Regent Street. The prince is in a private back room, crouching eye level with the forest-green felt of a pool table.

The old crew is here, in this room of delicate smoke, dewy pints, and pool cues. Edmund tosses his stick back and forth between his hands as he crows about his last victory. Eyeliner leans against the edge of the table, her cleavage thrust unsubtly in Richard’s direction. Mousy Hair and her boyfriend stand to the side, watching as the prince tries to sink the last of the colored balls.

Helene and Gwyn are eager to be off. Their report is brief, made only of snippets before they vanish through the door’s treated wood. I glower in the corner, burning hotter every second, like a coal fanned completely orange.

The other Fae are long gone when I snap, the agony of my anger sparking against dry tender. They don’t feel my magic work. They have no idea when I drop the veiling spell.

Edmund is the first to see me. His hands grow stiff, forget to catch the pool stick that’s sailing into them. It clatters to the floor, forgotten.

“Woah. Hey, Ginge,” he manages.

All at once the others find me, heads whipping about like a murmuration of starlings, perfectly synchronized. Eyeliner’s face withers into a scowl.

“Embers!” Richard lays his pool stick on the table and straightens up.

Edmund, clearly more than a beer or two into the evening, takes my nickname in with a snicker.

“All of you leave. Now.” The poison of my anger drives into Edmund’s face with a single stare. I don’t dare use magic to make them leave. There’s too much emotion venting up; I’m a volcano on the verge of eruption.

“And just who do you think you are? Ordering us about.” Eyeliner pushes off the pool table, her body made of slink and sex. I hate it. “Where the hell did you come from?”

Richard swallows when I look at him—his Adam’s apple bobbing with the sudden knowledge that I’m angry. That he messed up.

“Go,” he tells his friends.

Edmund doesn’t hesitate. Instead he’s the leader of the pack, snatching his still-frosted pint from a nearby table before he heads toward the door. “Good luck with that, mate.”

I have eyes only for Richard as the others shuffle past, though I can feel Eyeliner’s snarky pout behind my back. It lasts long after the door closes.

I stare and stare and stare. Richard swallows twice more before he attempts to speak, “You’re back.”

“You thought I wouldn’t be?” My voice is sharp, armed.

“You were gone, Emrys. Just gone.” His eyes drop from mine, focus on the eight ball, so starkly black and white in the middle of the table. “No good-bye or anything. I thought you’d come back, but you didn’t. Not that day or the next—I thought maybe you’d left for good. Then I—I began to think you might have been a dream. When I saw you in my sleep, I thought for sure you were inside my head.”

“It wasn’t a dream.” My lips purse. Any effort to stay calm, too keep myself in check, slides back like a viper coiling to strike. There’s too much emotion roiling through me, ready to be spit out like venom through fangs. “I broke through a window because I thought you’d been kidnapped. You were passed out in a corner.”

My accusation needles and digs under Richard’s skin, making him squirm.

“So as soon as I disappear you decide to get drunk?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “It’s not like that.”

I walk to the opposite end of the pool table and grab the closest ball. It’s striped, one of Edmund’s. My knuckles bleach white around it, the color of bone. “No?”

“Okay, so Ed called. He wanted to go out to the pubs, but I didn’t think that would be a good idea.”

“Right.” I roll my eyes, wheeling them pointedly about the room. “Look where you ended up.”

“I can’t just hide for the rest of my life behind all that wallpaper and iron!” Richard’s arm flails in the vague direction of the palace. “Anyway, that first night we didn’t go out. I was going to say no, but I was worried about you and feeling lonely, and I hadn’t seen them since Dad died. So I let them come over. We had a few drinks. . . .”

“It takes more than a few drinks to make a man pass out. Do you really not understand how much danger you’re in? You bloated yourself with so much alcohol it would make a horse stumble! What if you’d been attacked? You’d be dead.” I let the pool ball roll off my hand. It drops onto the table with a muffled crack, rolls over to the corner pouch, and disappears.

“Yeah?” The prince’s eyes cloud dark with sudden anger. His voice swells. “Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing! Then you’ll be free and you won’t have to babysit me and wipe my ass every second of the damn day!”

My breath turns sharp. I hadn’t expected Richard to fight back. My jaw clenches as I struggle to keep my frustration under control. One slip, one spell accidentally brought into being by my wrath, and the prince could die.

“Go on! Leave again! I know you want to! Why don’t you just let them take me and be done with it? At least they’ll put me out of my bloody misery!”

Richard’s words are like punches in my gut. Pointed and perfectly aimed.

“It wasn’t my choice to leave you! I was called away! It’s no excuse for you to get wasted.”

“That’s just what I need. One more person in my life telling me what to do! Why can’t everyone just leave me alone?” Richard aims a stern kick into the base of the pool table. The force of his foot causes the pool cue to shudder and fall to the carpet.

Silence, terrible and great, engulfs us both as we stare at the solitary stick.

“You didn’t mean that.” I can’t keep the hurt out of my voice. It stains everything inside me. “You don’t want me to leave . . . do you?”

For a terrible second, I think his answer will be yes. That Richard will banish me from his life. I hadn’t realized, until now, just how much such a rejection might hurt.

“Would you leave me?” He turns the question back on me. Under the greenish light above the pool table, his eyes have no color. They’re black as dead coal. “Wipe my mind clean so I never knew you?”

“If . . . if that’s what you want.” It feels like someone else is saying this. Someone who isn’t unsteady. Ready to collapse.

“No,” he says. The word is solid and sure. “I want you to stay.”

Richard looks around the room, as if seeing it fully for the first time. An ashtray of half-finished cigars smolders in the corner, spitting out secret, smoky messages. Hollowed pints, scattered on every available surface, seem so many they could make an army of blunted glass. Most of them are congregated in Edmund’s corner of the room.

“You’re right. This is stupid. It’s always been stupid, just like Dad said.” Richard avoids my eyes. “It’s just another way to get lost. It’s easy to hide in here.

“I’m trying. I really am.” He goes on, trying to swim his way out of this reeking, ash-filled cave. “But it’s too much. It’s all just been too much. Dad’s death. The expectations. Everyone wanting something. I didn’t ask to be the oldest! I didn’t ask to be made king!”

No king does. I want to tell him this, but my lips stay shut.

“And I don’t want to think about it. I don’t. All I want is to run and be somewhere else. But it doesn’t help. Even when I’m here doing all this . . . something’s still missing.”

Richard’s words wrap tight around me, carry me elsewhere. And I’m back in the castle ruins, face to the stars, wondering how I’ll ever be whole again.

“It’s just that, the only thing that’s been keeping me sane since Dad’s death is having you around. And when you were just gone . . . I—I don’t know. I just kind of lost it. I made an arse of myself.”

Something behind his words causes me to flinch. I know it’s the memory: the last exchange between father and son, the challenge that he’ll never be good enough. My accusations can only remind him of that awful, last morning with Edward.

Yet as terrible as he surely feels, I feel worse. There’s a sickness inside me separate from the machines. It writhes with a life of its own. I want, more than anything, to get rid of it.

“We have something.” My words are uncontainable, like vomit. “Do you know what I’ve risked showing myself to you? To get close to you? If Mab knew about you, about us . . .” I’m unable to finish. My chest feels raw and bleeding, as if someone has battered it with a mallet.

“I’m sorry,” Richard says softly. “Please believe that I’m sorry.”

Just like that, the fight is gone, drained out of me. Richard takes slow steps around the pool table, draws closer, until he’s only inches from me. I feel the heat rolling off his body, carrying spices of cologne and that faint earthiness. I close my eyes, but the darkness only makes his scent stronger. My heart claws hard against my ribs.

I know where this is going. How it will end. Lips will touch, carrying me away from the wildness of hill and moor, stitching my fate so much closer to the mortals. If things go wrong I can always erase it, say the simple spell that will make the prince’s memory of me fuzzy at best. The one thing I won’t be able to fix is myself.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about you, Embers. Your being gone was . . . agony. I never stopped seeing your face. That’s my truth.”

Richard’s fingers brush a strand of hair from my face. I open my eyes to find him staring down at me. “You’re like no one I’ve ever known. When you left—I felt it.”

My heart becomes a lion, roaring and beating against its fibrous, fleshy cage. Yearning to be free.

“You’re right. There’s some connection—something between us. I felt it that first time I saw you, your eyes.”

Richard leans down, closing the gap between us, drawing me into him. Our lips meet, smooth and seamless. There’s a nameless desire in the way he kisses me. I feel it rising in me as well, swelling like clear, triumphant notes. He pulls me close, his kiss growing deeper, a never-ending crescendo.

This—this is something else. It reaches deep inside me. Sparks my soul.

We come up for air. Faces flushed, hair disheveled. He’s looking at me, his mouth quirked into a crooked, bass-clef smile. I’m alight under his eyes. Someone breathtaking.

Want surges through me, searing static, burning away all thoughts of Mab and the taboo and who I was before.

I stand on tiptoes and pull his feather-boned cheeks to mine. Freckles press into white-board skin, becoming one. This time our kiss is even fiercer, desperate—raw energy fuels our lips. My fingers tangle, swim wrist deep through Richard’s damp straw hair as I tug him closer. Something inside me rises, builds. Wanting to consume.

His breath is a razor, cutting and quick as he pulls away.

My thoughts are everywhere, a herd of deer startled by gunshot. They take several seconds to gather as Richard steps back. His fingers are close to his mouth; they come away with a tinge of red. Blood.

Dread, heavy and sick, floods my stomach as dozens of memories return. Memories of Fae who’d fallen in love with mortals: of the choice, the sacrifice they had to make to be with their beloveds. Memories I didn’t need, didn’t want, until now. Because Richard was never an option.

Was. My lips still prickle with magic and something else entirely. Does that mean I think he is an option now?

No. Magic and mortals don’t mix. Breena’s right. I’m playing with fire.

But the hole is there, howling. Begging to be filled. Calling out for more of Richard’s touch.

“What the hell was that?” Richard pulls a small handkerchief out of his pocket, cleans his fingers.

“It’s my magic.” My voice trembles under this earthquake of emotions. They rock me back and forth, thrashing between elation and sorrow. “I’m sorry.”

“Your magic?” He looks at me with an eyebrow raised. The handkerchief is crumpled in his right hand, crimson splashes peek through gaps in his fingers.

“I think I got too excited. . . . I don’t know. I’ve never lost control of my magic before.” I cast him a second glance. “Are you okay?”

“You still taste like strawberries.” Pure joy lights his face, melting away all lines of weariness and grief. He leans back into me, warm breath diving down into mine. Our lips connect before I can stop them. His mouth is soft, like down and velvet. It makes all of me unwind.

It isn’t long before my magic strikes again. I feel its wicked, wanting rush and pull away. But not quickly enough.

Richard swears and grabs his mouth.

I back away, hit the edge of the pool table.

When Richard’s hand falls down, I gasp. His bottom lip is fat and shining, as though someone punched it. There’s a thin split down the middle, filled with blood. He pokes it with a tentative finger.

“Don’t.” I hold up my hand. “It’s bleeding.”

“So I take it that wasn’t a one-time thing?” He winces and his finger drops away.

The memories are clearer now, coming into harsh, unmistakable focus. Before the taboo, it wasn’t uncommon for Fae to fall in love with men of flesh and bone. One by one they came to Mab, handing over their magic for the sake of being with a mortal. I never understood why they joined the ranks of such helpless, short-lived beings. Why they handed their bodies over to the rot of the grave, all for the sake of someone else.

“No,” I tell him. “It’s not.”

“Why didn’t it happen the first time we kissed?”

“The magic escalates with the excitement. I guess a single kiss isn’t enough to trigger it. . . .”

“So . . . we can’t . . .” He looks down at the floor. It’s hardwood, polished. My feet are over a board’s length from his.

“If a Fae wants to be with a mortal, she has to become human.”

Magic and my immortality are what I would have to pay in order to really be with Richard. A single, happy lifetime against all the ages and power of the world. The choice should be obvious to any Fae. It should be easy to make.

But it isn’t. Which is why I’m still here.

Richard walks over to the edge of the room and sits on a padded bench. I stay against the pool table, my thoughts consumed by what I’ve just said.

“So if you wanted to be with me, you—you’d have to become human for good?” Richard asks.

“Yes. I would die.” I would pass on into the unknown, just as the other love-stricken spirits gave themselves over to death. Guinevere, Alene, Isidore, Kaelee . . . all faded into the growing sea of mortals, becoming as transient as spring’s first flowers. One burst of glory and then gone.

“That’s not much of a choice, is it?” The prince tries to laugh, but the sound comes out wrong, more like a choke. Sad, gray shadow dampens his face. It hoods his lashes and glazes his eyes.

And I wonder what he’s mourning. Me? The kiss? Being scared and running, always running, away from it?

No, it’s not much of a choice. I shouldn’t have to think twice about it. There’s so much to lose.

Staring at Richard now—curled over himself like a question mark, fist digging into his chin, all of him pensive and full of promise—I can’t help but wonder what’s on the other side. What it would look like to rest and really be in his arms. Wanting nothing.

Just thinking about it makes the jagged missingness inside me echo. It feels wide and forever, like the empty space between stars.

I try to shake off the moment by bringing up another, less tender subject. “I’m sorry I left without saying anything. I didn’t have a choice. I was called away by other Frithemaeg.”

“Where did you go?”

“North. To Queen Mab’s court. When she summons me, I have to leave. Don’t worry, there are other Fae protecting you when I’m gone,” I assure him.

“Will you have to leave again?”

“Probably.” Definitely. “But I’ll return to you as long as it’s in my power.”

Richard walks over to the table and grabs the abandoned stick. He knows that conversation is over. “Are you any good at pool?”

“I’m good at everything,” I tell him.

“Excellent.” He smiles, tosses me an extra pool cue. “I’ve been searching everywhere for some decent competition.”

“Here I am,” I say.