All That Glows

Fourteen

Mab sits alone in the throne room. Her hair, dreamwhite, like the dust of moth wings, spirals tight into a bun. This makes her profile calculated, clean like the edges of a shadow. Highlights the fierceness of her.

The first time I saw her, I remember, her hair was down. It streamed over her shoulders, colorless lengths catching the sun like a crystal. Iridescent. The beauty of it was overwhelming—light-dazzled mist at the base of a roaring falls—painting both power and peace. It was enough to make me, in all my spin and zephyr, stop and listen. To hear what she wanted to offer.

It had been simple enough. My loyalty for so many things. Protection. Order. Spells. A body like hers to anchor to the earth. To contain everything that was me.

I don’t remember why I said yes. It’s hard to remember what I was before this. There are times, out here, on the edge of stony-shored lochs, that I remember. The feralness stretches inside me, pinpricks of claws scratch against recollections of unbridled magic. The stench and tang of it. Wilderness and wildness, all at once inside me.

Mab waves me forward; the many rings on her fingers click together, calling me back with their strange music. I look down to the ring on my own thumb. It’s a silver, curling thing—a prize from a duchess’s open jewelry box. So solid on my finger, it reminds me of the realness of this body. How much I’ve both given and gained.

“You’ve guarded Richard for several weeks now,” Mab says when the last echo of my steps soaks into the chamber’s moss-coated floors. “I’ve called you here to give a full report.”

A report on Richard. I swallow. It’s one thing to test Breena’s tolerance of my emotions. But Mab . . . My memories drag me back to the Camelot days, when Guinevere, a Fae, declared her love for Arthur and relinquished her magic. Became mortal. The rage of our queen was unparalleled. Half of the court feared for their lives.

Time to be objective.

“Well, let’s have it then. How’s the prince coping? Drowning in the neck of a liquor bottle?”

“Actually he hasn’t touched a drop since the funeral. He wasn’t eating either, but he’s started taking care of himself in the past few days.” I keep my face steady, an amazing feat considering the anger that flares out of nowhere. I’ve never felt such emotions toward the queen before. Not even when she ordered me back to London.

This mortal is ruining me.

Mab is very still. Her hands rest flat against the throne’s gnarled, earthy wood. The gauzy sleeves of her gown, woven of web and fog, fall over them, hiding nothing. “He’ll be back to the bottle soon. Give him a few weeks. If there’s one thing I’ve learned through the years of our treaty, it’s that mortals rarely change so simply. You have to stay objective. It’s never good to let your charges get too . . . close. It never ends well.”

Something about her final words sets me on edge. My scalp needles under the unflinching, ever-changing colors of Mab’s stare. While the queen appears empty, unreadable, I know she’s probing me with millennias’ worth of magic. No matter how rigid I keep my face, how steady I thread my aura through the hoops of acceptable emotion . . . there’s no way my guard will keep up under her scrutiny.

Sooner or later, she will know.

But if she suspects anything, catches a whiff of longing under my piecemeal armor, she shows no signs of it. “And what of the Green Woman’s attack? I understand you were the only one to witness it.”

“Yes, Your Majesty. She attacked from the bushes. There was some kind of shield over her, made from someone else’s magic. From its strength and style, I’d say an Old One made it.”

“But you broke it?” Her bleached comma eyebrows twitch, the first sign of emotion since I curtsied my way through the door. Doubt.

“Barely,” I offer. “It took everything I had. A strong spirit cast it, much stronger than any of the Guard.”

Mab’s fingers dance over the breathless lace of her dress, pausing against the empty spaces. “I’ve always known you had something special, some talent—but to break an Old One’s shield is quite impressive indeed. Thank the Greater Spirit you managed it.”

I don’t bask long in the compliment. “The Old One has united them, Your Majesty. The Banshees and the Green Women. They’re working together in this.”

“The soul feeders?” She frowns. “Together?”

“I don’t know how she did it. But whatever’s going to happen . . . it’s big enough for the Green Women and the Banshees to form a truce. They’re allies now. I think . . . I think they mean to take the blood magic and wipe out the mortals with it.”

Mab rises from the throne’s ever-knotted roots and drifts toward the edge of the room, where a single rosebush bursts into flower—stark white in a chamber of dusk-light lavenders and blues. She takes a half-open bud between her fingers, studying the frosty tendrils. For a moment it seems my queen will snap the flower from its stem. Instead she strokes a velvet petal and leaves the bush be.

“She’s everywhere then. The Old One. Arms like snakes. Crawling through everything . . . getting it tangled . . .” Mab is muttering to herself, half the words whispered, unrestorable.

I fold my hands together. Even my own touch is startling in a place like this. Against every wish it makes me think of Richard.

“I believe we’ve been compromised.” She turns to me. “I had my suspicions when Muriel disappeared after Edward’s death. But now this new attack . . . It was too targeted. Too specific. The Old One’s been informed by someone on the inside.”

Betrayal beyond Muriel. It’s . . . possible. I feel flighty, a complete fool for not thinking of it until now. Have I left Richard in a den of wolves? “Milady, it could all be simply coincidence.”

“And how is it they didn’t even begin to pick up traces of the magic until well after you should have been dead? Hyde Park isn’t far from Buckingham. The perimeter guards should have sensed such a disturbance. Someone delayed it. Someone on the inside.” Mab’s sigh is wither and crumble, a strength diminished. She glides close, her hand rests against the tendons of my shoulder. I have to stop myself from gaping at the power behind her colorless, translucent skin. She’s old—far older than I’m ever likely to become, with how swiftly technology is spreading.

“I hate to put this on you because you’re so young, but you’re the only one I trust. You had a chance to save the prince and you took it. I know where your loyalties lie. The rest . . .” My queen’s words become gravelly before they fall into stillness.

“What about Breena? I know she’s loyal.”

“Whoever blocked your spells from reaching the other Fae had to use strong magic, more powerful than anything most of the, ahem, younglings, could have conjured. It’s Breena who worries me the most.”

Her words sink in. Breena? A traitor? There’s no way on this earth my friend would betray the royals.

“Breena was nowhere near the attack!” I reason.

“That doesn’t clear her.” Mab’s words aren’t gentle. She has no room for it. “I’ve heard even in London, magic can work at a distance.”

I have no argument for this. I keep my mouth shut, waiting for my queen to continue.

“I want you to look into the matter—the Guard must be clean and loyal. Root out anyone you deem isn’t. That includes Breena,” she says. “I grant you permission to ignore her orders if you think that they will in any way endanger the prince.”

“But, Majesty, what about Richard? I’m supposed to be guarding him. . . .”

“Leave two or three Frithemaeg with him if you’re gone. I doubt a traitor would try anything with another Fae in the room. You have my permission to relieve your detail as often as you need. Just make sure you don’t leave him with the younger ones for too long. I’ll call you back in another month for a report, but if you uncover anything sooner, don’t hesitate to message.”

“Of course, Your Majesty.”

Under her opal eyes I feel like quartz: brittle and translucent. “You reek of modernity. The city has been hard on you, I take it?”

“Not easy,” I answer, honest.

“Stay here for an evening. It will do your spirit some good. Give you some luster.” The way she says this is an order. Not an offer.

“Thank you, my queen.”

“One more thing.” The queen holds up her finger and digs through her hushed layers of gown and petticoats until she pulls out a slim, caramel envelope labeled with curling letters. “I’d like you to deliver this message to Herne first thing in the morning.”

The spells woven into the envelope’s seal call out to me as I brush my finger over it. Mab will know when it’s opened and who tore the paper. The queen’s giving me this message means only one thing: it’s too secret to send by sparrow.

My thoughts are swimming, full of mirage and possibilities as I tuck the letter into my skirts and bow out of the chamber. Breena . . . not one iota inside me clings to the belief that Breena betrayed the humans she so fiercely guards. But the younglings . . . any one of them could be privy to the plot to bring down the mortals. To end Richard’s life.

Richard. The thought of him is a tattoo inked against my heart, pained and always there, even when I’m not looking. I wonder what he’s doing right now, apart from me. What the younglings around him are doing. Protecting or plotting . . .

“Richard will be fine,” I say the thought aloud, but it doesn’t help. I’m strung tighter than a harp, ready to get back to him.

I don’t stay under the earth. Unlike Queen Mab, I’ve never been a creature of closed, tight spaces. What feeds me, makes my soul sing, is wide plains. The soaring openness of the sky and the lunge of mountains rolling up to meet it. There’s plenty of this spreading out from Mab’s stronghold. Miles and miles of rugged land, cradled in mist and ribbons of mostly melted snow. In the full daylight, when the lochs and their streams echo the blueness of sky and the black of their depths, it’s possible to see past the ruins of castles and defiant, layered hillsides, all the way to the sea.

It’s in one of these far-forgotten fortresses that I claim sanctuary. I spend my evening among its bald relic stones, taking in the ever-clear song of the stars through a roof collapsed by long-melted blizzards. Just feet away, the tar-dark waters of a loch swish and hum with the movement of Kelpies and oh-so-shy Sprites coming up for air. There are mortal creatures too: deer and hare grazing the unkempt grass.

In such a place, I should feel whole, complete. Lacking nothing. It’s where I was knit and made, where I am alive.

The sickness is gone. Nothing in my body feels the stabbing zing of current and gears. I’m at the height of my bound, incarnate power, ready to take on an army of soul feeders.

But something is unmistakably missing. A hole has been sawed through my chest. A piece of myself I lost without consent.

I can’t not think of him. Even under such a dazzling sight as these silver-dusted heavens.

And I hate myself for being so weak—like so many of the other girls who bemused me over the years, the ones feverish with daydreams and first kisses, mooning over romanticized versions of men whose lips they touched. I’m a Fae. I’m supposed to be above all that.

But the thoughts spin regardless, over and over, picking apart Richard’s every expression. All the words he’s ever said to me. Especially the last ones: I was wondering if there might be another reason.

And all at once, I know.

There was nothing wrong with my magic. The fault wasn’t in the veiling spell or the sickness. I showed myself to Richard, dropped the enchantments, because, in the most mysterious, unreachable places of me, I wanted to. Some part of me, the piece that’s gone now, wouldn’t let me hide from him.

At one time, I could count on the world. Winter’s hard freeze, the bitter howls of gray wolves, the colors and laughter of May Day and the bonfires of Samhain, the twines of magic holding me together . . . Things once constant, now suddenly not. Nothing, not even the immortal, is safe from decay.

How much of ourselves have we lost? I’m not the Fae who dwelled among these ghost-filled barrows and emerald hillsides so many years ago. I’m not the Fae who tumbled into Saint James’s Park and watched Breena feed the pigeons. I don’t know what—who—I am.

But I do know that Richard has something to do with it.