The Ad-hene are waiting.
Sixteen shadows, sixteen flares of silver light winking over the iron-dark waves. Calling us to their jagged coastline. The scar-marks draw closer with the current and Anabelle’s secondary-school sailing skills. With every wave which brings us in to shore, I feel a new layer of their uniform magic. Earthy, raw, yearning.
The last feeling must be mine, I realize, as the princess ties the boat off. A yearning for lost things, as empty and cold as the wind licking these stones. The steps have already been sculpted for us. As uneven and toothy as wolf fangs.
“I’m not going to lie,” Anabelle whispers as we start our climb toward the Ad-hene’s flickering lights. “I’m already a little creeped out.”
“Let me do the talking.” I push ahead of her.
Alistair stands at the front of the group. Half-lidded and head tilted, as if he’s about to nod off into dreams. But sharp black eyes cut behind those lids: quick and questioning.
“Lady Emrys. We were not expecting you. Titania sent no sparrow.”
I stare down the queue of scar-lights. The exact same pattern—tangling and worming, silver and changing—sixteen times. Most of the Ad-hene’s faces are too far or dark to see. But a certain pair of eyes snares mine.
Kieran. He’s standing just behind Alistair, second in line. Watching me the way he did when we last stood on this cliff. Something about his stare, just behind its gray, winter sky hardness, makes me look away.
I clear my throat, find my voice. “This is quite a welcome for an unexpected visit.”
“Your auras called to us, from across the sea. We do not get many visitors.” Alistair’s dark eyes slide over my shoulder, where Anabelle stands on her tiptoes, trying to watch without being watched. “You—”
Fifteen other gazes shift, lock onto the princess in a single motion. Kieran’s eyes narrow—there’s a flicker in them I can’t fully read. Surprise, familiarity, then nothing.
They stare and stare at her. Anabelle—the princess who handles paparazzi and press with such cool—starts to squirm. “Me?”
“You’re not a Frithemaeg.” Alistair lets the observation linger on the air.
“Guess that makes two of us,” the princess quips back.
“But you’re not completely mortal either. Nor a faagailagh.”
“Of course I’m mortal.” Anabelle shivers. “Now if we could please stop talking about fitzgathers or whatever, and get on to finding my brother that would be bloody lovely.”
“Your brother?” The leader of the Ad-hene blinks. His stare flows back to me: smooth, powerful, dark as a deep sea current. “Why are you here, Lady Emrys?”
“I wish to revisit the Corridor of the Forgotten,” I tell him. “To speak with the prisoner there.”
Alistair turns to the sheer cliff-face, breaks it apart with a single spell. The stones split open and stale air sighs out of the Labyrinth. It whispers past my cheeks, laced with the strange spice of the Ad-hene’s magic. It’s bitter and biting, like ground pepper.
“Follow us,” the leader of the Ad-hene says before he blends into the dark of the tunnels. The Manx spirits move as one being, swift and rushing. Anabelle and I have to run to keep up with the sixteen scar-lights.
Despite the extra shine of the Ad-hene’s marks, the Labyrinth feels even darker now, its tunnels more winding. As if all this time I’ve been away, it’s been growing, sinking deeper into the earth. We turn and twist together, footsteps echoing. The sound reminds me of the throb under Richard’s chest: bum, bum, beat, beat.
Richard. I try not to think about him because every time I do it’s like a lance to my heart. Sharp and stabbing.
But once the thoughts start, no matter how fleeting (the memory of his voice, the feel of his hair under my fingertips, that smile), they will not stop. They tear through my soul like an avalanche.
Where is he now? Is the blood magic rising, burning in his veins? Is he seeing only darkness too?
“It’s a lost cause, talking to Guinevere.” It’s not until Kieran speaks that I realize he’s beside me. Matching me step for step. “Her mind is scrambled. Gone.”
“Wait,” Anabelle stumbles. “Did you say Guinevere? Guinevere as in the queen who cheated on King Arthur with his best knight Lancelot and single-handedly destroyed Camelot?”
“Not quite single-handedly . . . ,” I start to say when Alistair halts. The glow on his arm grows unbearably bright. It strips everything bare, reveals cells, twisted runes, and solid bars. The ruin and rot of this dark place.
Guinevere is waiting for us. Her face is so small—so birdlike and wasted—it fits easily through the gaps in the bars. That needle-point chin is tilted to the side.
I stop and stare at this woman. The only other creature in the world like me. A faagailagh. The only other soul who could possibly understand how I’m suspended, dangling so cruelly between these two races. Who knows what it’s like to lose the love of her life.
“Step, step! Pitter, patter!” She mewls like a kitten. One hand lets go of the bars, stretches out toward me. “Up, down. To, fro.”
I lick my lips. “Lady Guinevere.”
At the sound of her name, the former Fae cackles. “Ladies-in-waiting! There’s more than enough. One lady waiting. Waiting a long, long time!”
“Holy . . . That’s Guinevere?” Anabelle’s face is ghastly under Alistair’s worming light. “She’s . . . old.”
Guinevere’s laugh dies. Her next words are a reverent hush. “The sister of a king. Round and round it goes. In circles. Across the sea and back again.”
“How does she know who I am? She can’t even see me.” The princess shudders. At the same time I move closer to the bars, keeping a careful eye on those yellowed nails.
“I found the dreams,” I tell her.
The hallway falls eerily quiet. Sixteen scars fight and flare against the dark—showing me how Guinevere’s mouth is shut, lips drawn pencil thin to hide rotting teeth. Her one hand is tight against the bars and the other keeps pointing. Accusing.
“You knew what was going to happen. You tried to warn me. . . .” I watch the faagailagh’s face carefully. Those wrinkles and many folds of splotched skin stay still.
“Where is he?” I reach out, grip the same bars as Guinevere. I force myself to look straight into her eyes. Lose myself in their blank, blizzard white. “Where’s Richard?”
Her free hand drifts down to my breastbone, two nails tapping lightly against my skin. “There’s no map like the heart.”
“Where is he?” I ask again, trying my hardest not to flinch away. “Who took him? You know! You have to know!”
“You know!” Guinevere rasps my own words back at me: a shriveled echo. “Remember! Remember!”
I don’t care that Guinevere’s nails are still creased against my chest, or that it’s my face against the bars now. Just a breath away from hers. I only care that Richard is gone.
“Tell me!” I’m screaming. “Who took him? Where is he?”
The faagailagh’s mouth opens, but then her eyes bulge wide. A sound rises from her throat like a dog wheezing against a leash. A tongue lolls over her lips, purple and swollen.
I watch her and feel a strange, distant twinge deep in my chest. Magic.
The same magic I felt in the cell just a few meters away from here. That mingle of old and new. The same magic I felt in Trafalgar Square before the world went to hell . . .
Small bubbles spill from the edges of Guinevere’s lips, so much like sea foam. Her voice rasps, managing only a few broken syllables before it cuts off altogether.
“What’s happening to her?” Anabelle gasps behind me.
“It’s a spell. . . .” My throat feels thick. Guinevere is still thrashing in her cell, like a stranded fish desperate to get back into water. “Someone’s keeping her quiet.”
I turn to the lights. The Ad-hene are all queued along the back wall: silent watchers. Both handsome and grotesque. Like gargoyles. Unmoved.
Alistair is the stillest, that weary look set on his alabaster face as he watches the cell. “Many times we’ve tried to ask her about the escape. Every time she chokes up like this.”
Guinevere bends double in her cell, like a marionette cut from its strings. Brittle hair sweeps the bare floor, gathering dust. The once-Fae starts to cough—the sound is almost as rough as a Black Dog’s howl.
“Can’t you help her?” Anabelle asks. “There must be some way to lift the spell.”
“For one with so much magic in her veins you do not seem well versed in it.” The princess stiffens, but Alistair plods on, unfazed. “This magic isn’t of the Fae or the Ad-hene. I would not know where to begin. And in helping her I would only make it worse.”
“Circles. Back again. The sea is circling. Bright, bright water.” Guinevere stops coughing. She clutches her neck again. “Like a noose.”
“What sea?” I ask.
The faagailagh shakes her head. “Riddles are all I have. They couldn’t touch the dreams though.”
“Who couldn’t touch the dreams?” I’m all the way to the bars now, cheeks pressed tight into the metal.
Guinevere’s eyes flare wide again, tiny whitewashed planets suspended in the rot of her face. Her head keeps shaking, tufts of hair whip back and forth, back and forth. Those gnarled roots of hands keep clutching her throat. Nails digging deep. The skin there grows suddenly dark: a thick, oozing burst of red.
“Guinevere!” I shout her name, but Arthur’s bride doesn’t seem to hear me. She’s thrashing, falling over herself.
And I feel that magic again. Taunting my fragile senses through the bars. Ebbing and fading. I’m close to the answer. So close. But the spell’s grip is strong, made of impossible knots. Maybe, if I still had my magic, I could find a way around it.
I look over at the cell next to Guinevere’s, where I first felt this complicated signature of magic. Where I first knew something was very, very wrong. The trail which leads to Richard is right here in front of me. I just don’t have the means to follow it.
But the Ad-hene do.
I look back to the queue of stony faces, pick out Alistair.
“Your king is gone then,” he says. Dry, factual.
Of course he’s not surprised. The Ad-hene knew this was coming. They tried to warn us . . . tried to help.
“He was taken this morning,” I say.
“And you think this has something to do with the one who escaped?” The Ad-hene nods at the empty cell, where chalk runes litter the wall like cave drawings.
“I know it does.”
Sixteen silver-lattice maps sear into my eyes. Strung out like garden party lights, welding-torch bright. Tears have started to cloy my eyes, trickle down my cheeks, but I don’t look away. Those marks: they’re the only reason Titania refused the Ad-hene’s help. The only reason I’m not sitting on a loch’s shore, fingers wrapped inside Richard’s.
And now Titania is gone. Richard too. Only the marks remain, bright as winter stars.
The Ad-hene are my only option. My only hope.
“The last time I was here, you offered the service of the Ad-hene,” I remind Alistair. “The magic that’s choking Guinevere. Could one of you track it?”
Silence. Even Guinevere’s whimpers have faded. All of us watch the whitewashed leader as he closes his eyes.
“Our offer to track the prisoner still stands,” Alistair says finally. “The Ad-hene are nothing if not bound. Kieran will assist you.”
If Kieran is surprised, he doesn’t show it. He looms by my side— still—as if he were a cast-iron masterpiece planted on a London street corner. His mark flares like Polaris.
Anabelle shivers next to him. A part of her face plays blue against Kieran’s mark. The Ad-hene’s flint eyes tear from his leader to the princess.
“Aile.” A second, softer light springs up from Kieran’s hand. Fire licks across the creases of his palm as he offers it to Anabelle. “Take it, Princess.”
The orange light ripples over her face as she stares at the fire, uncertain.
“It won’t harm you,” he tells her. “It only looks dangerous.”
Anabelle stares at the bundle of light for a moment longer before she grabs it and tucks it to her chest. Her shivers cease.
“It’s not an easy thing you’re asking,” Kieran tells me. The false fire blooms behind his eyes as he looks back to Guinevere’s cell. The faagailagh leers against the bars. A patch of blood pools bright at the base of her throat. “This magic . . . It’s old. Strong. Angry. If I help you find its wielder . . . I do not think it will end well.”
“I’ve fought old magic before,” I tell him.
“Yes. Before. But now . . .” His eyes flicker back to the fire in the princess’s palms. She’s entranced by the burning sphere in her hands. It dances in her eyes too, revealing all their terror and wonder.
But now I’m a faagailagh. A fire without flame. Not dangerous.
“I’m not asking you to fight for me. Just help me find the trail.” That’s all I need. A trail. As soon as I find proof that the wielder of this magic was in London, I can go to Titania’s court and show her I was right: magic was behind Richard’s disappearance. Then the Frithemaeg will be forced to keep their oath and save the king.
I’ll get Richard back.
Alistair’s magic tugs across the corridor, pulling Kieran’s attentions back to him. Silent orders hum between them.
“This is a chance to prove our loyalties,” Alistair finishes aloud. “Go and make the Ad-hene proud, Brother.”
Kieran bows, stiff and perfectly hinged at the waist. He turns to me.
“I’m yours,” he says.
“Round and round it goes. A widening gyre. I flipped wrong. Remember.” Guinevere’s words are a defeated mumble—drained of life and strength and sanity—as she melts into the shadows of her cell. “Please remember. You are not powerless.”
Nonsense and gibberish. Too far from the truth to even be considered a riddle. I feel more powerless than ever as I watch her retreat. Back to her ageless, timeless doom.
“I think I’m going to have nightmares for the rest of my life,” Anabelle mutters as soon as we climb back into the sailboat.
If only she knew how true her statement was. My steps sway as I clamber on to the boat and collapse against one of the cushions, reminding me how tired my body is. Soon it will need sleep. I will have to let the nightmares in again.
“How does a place like that even exist?” The princess scales the cliffs with her eyes.
“The Isle of Man is one of the great wells of magic.” Kieran leaps into the boat, landing on the deck with a litheness I wouldn’t have attributed to his kind.
“A well?” Anabelle asks over her shoulder. She’s already scuttling across the deck of the sailboat, unlashing knots and winding levers back.
“Yes. Parts of the earth where magic flows more naturally. There are several such places in this kingdom. Stonehenge. Glastonbury. Loch Ness. The Cliffs of Dover. Back when there was more magic in the land, spirits were born in these places. Every spirit sprung from the Isle of Man is an Ad-hene.”
“So what about the tunnels and the cells? Where did those come from?” Anabelle tugs the winch she’s adjusting extra tight.
“The very first Ad-hene loved the earth so much they did not wish to leave it. They created an underground kingdom of caves and tunnels. It was a majestic place: walls glittering with mica, lakes so deep you could never reach the bottom, long halls which caught your voice and carried it for miles . . .
“More and more Ad-hene came into existence. The island soon became too small for our numbers, but none of the Ad-hene wished to leave. The oldest Ad-hene found a way to make room for all of us. They cast a spell to make the tunnels endless. Ever-changing and growing.” Kieran stretches out his arm, giving us both a clear view of the map on his skin. Impossibly complex, crawling like a living organism. Around and around those severe muscles. “All of us were marked with maps to navigate it.”
The Labyrinth of Man is a spell. The biggest looped spell I’ve ever seen. I listen to Kieran’s story, watch the light shift restless on his arm—and realize just how much I don’t know about the Manx spirits.
Anabelle looks back at the cliff, where fifteen lights twinkle like Christmas tinsel against the scoured gray dawn. “What happened to the others?”
I think the same question as I count the marks again. Sixteen. Even when I used to come here on prisoner transport duty there weren’t many more than that. Certainly not as many as Kieran speaks of.
So what happened to all of them?
The Ad-hene looks up at the marks as well. Obsidian curls cluster his face, frame its blankness. He doesn’t answer—I’m not sure he can. His mouth is fused like stone.
The princess stops pulling the winch. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“There was a war between the Ad-hene. A very long time ago,” Kieran says dryly. “We lost many brothers. We nearly destroyed the entire island and fought to the brink of extinction, but Queen Mab intervened. She offered us her help in exchange for the use of our tunnels. That was when it became a prison.”
“Oh, Mab.” Anabelle scrunches her nose and gives the winch a final, vicious yank. “I wasn’t really her biggest fan. Considering she tried to kill me and drain my blood like some kind of crazed albino vampire.”
“Vampire?” Kieran’s face goes from daze to frown. I realize, as I watch his confusion, that Anabelle is probably the first true mortal he’s ever spoken with. “What’s that?”
“Really?” Anabelle quirks an eyebrow at me. “No vampires?”
I shake my head.
Anabelle looks back at the Ad-hene. “Don’t worry about it. So you live in the dark all the time? Don’t you ever get sick of it?”
“No. The Labyrinth is part of me.” Kieran traces the threading on his arm. “It’s my nature.”
“Can’t argue with that.” The princess leans over the side of the boat, unravels the final knot mooring us into place. “Do you think your nature might be able to help this sailboat move faster? Took us long enough getting here and the wind’s not in our favor this time.”
Kieran’s magic billows against the sails and Anabelle mans the wheel, steering us off the coast. I have nothing to do but sit and watch and feel Guinevere’s words inside my chest—haunted and clawing. Making no sense, yet meaning everything.
One word rises out from all the rest. Her scream in every dream. Her final plea.
Remember what? How Camelot burned and its ashes coated the hillsides like snow? How Guinevere was once bold and beautiful and happy—so in love with King Arthur that you could hear it in every single syllable she spoke? How none of the Fae understood how someone so fierce, so committed, could abandon her king for a new lover, destroy everything?
There’s something I’m missing. Some key piece to the puzzle, swirling around in those endless lifetimes of memories, just beyond my reach.
I never used to forget things, but ever since Herne siphoned my magic, the past has become fuzzy.
The cushion I’m sitting on dips under a new weight. Kieran. I feel his closeness before I see him. His presence, his magic prickles the back of my neck: a summer evening swelter. Thick and all over.
Kieran is much older than he looks, with those perfect spiral curls and hurricane eyes. His powers are deep, aged strong. If only I had a bit of it. Just a taste—what wouldn’t I do?
There it is again. The yearning—stretching as far and wide as this November sea. I shut my eyes but I still feel it. So I focus on the bob of the boat on the waves instead.
Kieran speaks with a voice like rum: dark and spicy. “The princess. She’s not what I expected. She’s fiery.”
My eyes snap open at this sly, cruel word. I can’t help but think the Ad-hene used it on purpose.
But Kieran isn’t looking at me. He’s staring at the helm, where Anabelle stands by the wheel. Her hair has fallen loose, the wind weaves it in ribbons of gold over her shoulders. The rest of her coronation makeup is gone, washed off by sea mist, but I think she’s prettier without it. Beautiful. The Ad-hene does too, I think.
Or perhaps he just stares this intensely at everyone.
I shut my eyes again, focus on the sudden quease of my stomach. So much like the sickness I once fled from. The sickness I lost when I chose Richard, turned my back on power and eternity.
“She’s driven,” I say. “Just like her brother.”
My eyes are still shut, still pinned on dark and nausea. I can’t tell if Kieran is shifting closer or farther. “You were there? When he was taken?”
The shelter of my closed eyes is suddenly compromised, flooded with pictures. Richard swarmed by those masked men, being torn from my arms. Me pinned into the cushions. Powerless.
So weak and failing. This fire without flame.
I draw a sharp breath, open my eyes.
“Yes. Men came into the carriage and took him. They tore him straight out of my arms.” I try to recite this like pure fact. As if I were reading off a recipe. But my voice betrays me, comes out half-sob.
“Men?” Kieran tilts his head.
I don’t have the energy to explain it. So I don’t.
“You told me before that your love did not make you miserable. It seems a cruel twist . . .” He doesn’t go on, but I know where his words would go if they did. I know because I’ve been thinking it myself over and over.
If I still had my magic, I could have saved him.
I gave up power for love. And lost love because I gave up power.
A cruel twist indeed.
“I’d rather not talk about it,” I manage to choke out.
Kieran watches me. His stare is careful and intent. His words are the same. “Forgive me. It was not my intention to cause you suffering. I’m still trying to understand how love is worth all this. . . . It’s haunted me, you know. Our conversation. You have such a conviction, a will. Seeing it left me wanting . . . wondering if there’s something more.
“This is the first time I’ve left the island,” the Ad-hene goes on. His eyes break away from where I sit, back in the direction of the cliffs. The lights of his brothers are gone, swallowed by distance and daylight.
The boat sways on the waves, up and down through silence.
“I never knew about the war between the Ad-hene,” I say.
“It was many ages ago. We are united now and we try our best to forget.” Memories chip and spark through his eyes. “We try our best to forget, but sometimes I think the island remembers. It stopped creating us. There have been no new Ad-hene since those days. My brothers and I are all that are left.”
Bones of a once great kingdom. There’s a longing in Kieran’s voice I know all too well.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper into the waves.
“It is behind us now. We can only look forward.” Kieran looks away from the boat’s wake, up to the helm, where Anabelle’s hair licks gold. Where the sea stretches out like a story waiting to be read. “Hope for better things.”
The dip and rise of the Irish Sea is too much for my heavy lids. I try my best to fight it, but weariness wins out. I fall with the boat into black, into sleep and chaos.
The mountainside is above me now, towering like a dragon. A lone figure stands on the edge of the hill, looking down at all that’s unfolding around me. I can’t see the face. It’s too shrouded by fog and distance.
The hell of battle stretches around me: blood, splintered bones, and death. Planted in the mud a few meters away is Arthur Pendragon’s banner: a scarlet standard with a white dragon. Its staff is snapped like a twig, the flag’s edges dragging in the mud. Across the grim field the castle’s fire is already beginning to spread. Soon it will ravage everything.
I know it’s a dream, yet my heart is all terror inside my chest: punching, beating, trying to flee. It feels too real. The braided scents of sweat and blood. The nail-curling shrieks of gutted horses. Men.
Then I see him and my heart stops.
Richard stands in the center of the field. All around him is scarred earth and the insides of men turned out, but he’s untouched. His ermine cape flows flawless over the mud and his boots are unscuffed. His eyes are wide as they take in Camelot’s doom. They comb through the field and land, finally, on me.
“Embers?” His voice breaks through screams, the raging song of war. Reaches to where I am.
I start running for him, ankles sinking deep in the mud. Moving forward is a struggle, but I do it anyway, dodging bodies and fallen swords. Blades and knights blur around me, but all I see is Richard. Standing alone. Vulnerable. I’m pushing, pushing, as fast as my feet will allow.
Movement just behind Richard’s ermine cape catches my eye. Black armor. Black blade. There’s only one man in the entire world who wore such armor. Only one blade which had such a black-adder bite.
He was the leader of the northern armies. The man who invaded Camelot and planted his blade in King Arthur’s chest.
Mordred. Killer of kings.
I know this is a dream. I know this man has been dead for more than a thousand years, but still my blood becomes ice.
“Run, Richard!” I scream at the top of my lungs, but he doesn’t seem to hear. He’s still staring in my direction, reaching for someone who isn’t there.
I lunge through the mud, but Mordred is faster. He grabs the end of Richard’s cape. Starts to pull. The king is just tumbling back when I reach him. Our fingers touch.
Real. It feels so real. These are his fingers. The ones which traced every intimate curve of my face. Which threaded through my hair every time we kissed.
These are his fingers. The ones which are being torn away. Yanked in the direction of Mordred’s blade.
And—again—there’s nothing I can do to stop it.