Anabelle keeps plowing through the day. Before breakfast her invitation to Julian Forsythe is sent and she’s perfected basic memory modification spells under Kieran’s careful tutelage. By lunch she’s already agreed to an exclusive interview with the nation’s largest news network to tell her version of the kidnapping and cement her innocence in Mordred-Julian’s mind. Kensington Gardens become overrun. Extension cords wind alongside leafless vines. The hustle of the camera crew sprays gravel off the neatly raked paths.
Kieran and I stand on the edge of the garden. Watching as camera techs set up their equipment and a makeup artist erases the sleepless night from the princess’s eyes. Eric stands watch from the opposite side of the garden, looming like a dark omen in the middle of bare rose brambles. His eyes rove the gravel paths; his hands stay rigid by his stun gun.
“Are you really going to let the princess go through with this plan?” The Ad-hene’s eyes are anchored on Anabelle’s back, as attentive and alert as Eric.
I take a deep breath, look down at the flowerbed by my feet. I can’t be certain, but I think this is where the marigolds once were. Before the frost settled in, turned everything to black and wither.
“You think I shouldn’t?” I ask him.
“You know the risk as well as I. Mordred is a powerful sorcerer. Cunning. If he catches the princess in her deception . . .” Kieran’s jaw tightens, an intricate weave of muscles. “Are you really willing to let the princess risk everything?”
“Anabelle’s right. We have to try.” The Ad-hene looks down at me as I say this. His silvery attentions pouring like a storm over my shoulders, into my awareness.
We’re not alone, but with the veiling spell wrapped tight and the princess’s back to us we might as well be.
Futures are branching out before me. Forking with every breath. Every fresh pulse of Kieran’s follee-shiu.
“We’re running out of options,” I keep talking, as if more words could keep what’s coming at bay. “The Frithemaeg are gone. The princess is too new in her magic. And you yourself said you weren’t strong enough.”
“Not alone.” Kieran’s words hang like ripe fruit, begging to be plucked. “We could face Mordred. Together.”
There’s no mistaking his meaning. Not with the gleam in his eyes which reminds me so very much of the tunnel. The words still echoing off of those rune-struck tiles: He’s not your only choice. The empty space that’s slowly collapsing between us.
“I—I can’t.” Why do these words feel like molasses stuck on my tongue, the back of my throat? So hard to get out?
“You’ve trapped yourself, become what you’re not.” He reaches out, fingers ghosting along the ends of my black, black hair. “I still see the fire in you. You’re only hurting yourself by trying to put it out.”
It’s as if the world has melted around us, fallen away. It’s just Kieran and me, standing in the hot cocoon of his veiling spell. I’m so very aware of his fingertips. How they hover just a moment from my skin.
The pine-needle prickles in my gut have grown, swallowed everything. The whole of me is a forest aflame.
“You gave up magic for love. But what if you don’t have to?” His whisper slides around my neck. Possessive, gripping, desperate. “I know you feel it too. There’s something here. Between us.”
“Take back your magic.” He leans in. Closer, ever closer. “Set yourself free.”
Sweet, sickly poison: the taste of these words. It crawls sluggish through my veins, makes me still. Unable to move or even breathe. I’m simply standing in front of the Ad-hene, drunk off of his magic, his words, my mind spinning.
Richard. I love Richard.
But that doesn’t stop Kieran from pressing his lips to mine.
He kisses me. Hard.
Kieran is all storm and sea. His lips draw me in like a whirlpool, spin me. Deeper into the rawness of his spirit—the pieces of him no body could convey. The true, wild danger of the Ad-hene.
It’s like catching the crest of a wave, plummeting through the water’s foamy fury. Fast and fierce and uncontrollable. I feel Kieran’s magic tugging my soul, riptide strong, wanting to consume. Carry me away to the other shore.
Back to where I started.
Kieran’s hands glide like water down my neck, my shoulders, my arms. His palm passes over the five crusty nail marks. They call out—sharp pain—howling Guinevere’s words back at me:
The circling sea will swallow us whole. I flipped wrong.
All of me goes stiff. The Ad-hene’s kiss becomes fraught. Beyond hungry.
The only other soul in the world like me screams, screams, screams in my memories: I flipped wrong and the world burned.
Like me.
I tear away. My hair is a tangled mess over my eyes—webbing black through the sight of Kieran. His face belongs to someone who just lost something important—jigsawed with emotions. Furrowed brow for confusion. Hard jaw for anger. Shining eyes for pleading. Chin wrinkled for hurt. And something else I can’t seem to place—swimming in the tension of those lips which just touched mine.
“No. No. This is all wrong.” I shake my head, as if that will clear it. All it does is set me spinning. Everything inside me is so far from north.
I look away from the Ad-hene, try to get my bearings. Down at the churned soil where the marigolds used to root: an empty bed full of holes. Over to Eric’s stern, knight-like vigil.
And then I see Anabelle.
The princess stands alone in a crowd of people, staring at me with eyes that could pierce stone. They hit me like twin javelins, sink deep into my gut.
She saw everything.
Kieran’s breath goes silver-edged, as if Anabelle’s eyes have gutted him too. “Emrys . . .”
But whatever the Ad-hene has to say, I don’t want to hear it. I step away from him, into the dirt of the flowerbed. The loose, broken soil swallows my feet, just like the mud from the dream. Only instead of running to someone, I’m fleeing.
Soil clings to my steps, leaving trails of filth where I walk. Veiled dirt only Anabelle can see.
But she isn’t looking anymore. She’s sitting on the garden bench, getting her microphone fitted to the collar of her designer dress. Her hands are folded into her lap like a neat valentine. Her long hair is wound up tight, showcasing the beautiful sculpt of her face.
There’s nothing in her expression, not a flicker or flinch to indicate what she just saw.
I halt only a meter away from the bench, where I’m drowning in a sea of gravel, grips, and gaffers. So close I could speak to her. But she’s not alone. On the other end of the bench is the same brunette reporter who interviewed Edmund: Meryl Munson.
Even if I could speak to Anabelle, I have no idea what I might say. No apology, no excuse can wash the stain of Kieran from my lips.
With one shout from the crew Meryl Munson looks straight into the camera, all smile, telling her viewers the story they already know. How, the very same day King Richard disappeared, Britain’s princess was snatched straight out of a high-security bunker, a victim of the very magic her brother swore to protect.
Anabelle’s smile grows tighter and tighter—a rope on the verge of snap. It’s winched as taut as possible by the time Meryl turns and finally asks her a question.
“You’ve had quite a past few days, Your Highness. Can you tell me a bit about your ordeal?”
The princess takes a deep, steady breath. “After Richard vanished, my protection team took my mother and me to a secure location. I insisted Emrys accompany us. Once we arrived at the bunker she overpowered the guards and kidnapped me.”
Meryl Munson leans forward, yet somehow manages to keep her face angled always at the camera. “What was going through your mind when you realized Emrys had betrayed you?”
“I couldn’t believe it at first. Didn’t want to.” Anabelle swallows. The short golden charm on her necklace dips into the base of her throat. “She seemed to love Richard so much. . . . She was already a part of our family. I thought of her as a sister. To see her true nature come out so viciously—it was a shock.”
I know this is the story she meant to tell when she agreed to the interview. The words she planned on saying. Yet every one of them tears into me, until I’m riddled through with holes. All of me feels uprooted.
“Not everyone seemed so shocked.” Meryl says this like an admonishment. “Julian Forsythe has been preaching the dangers of immortals ever since Emrys first appeared. Wasn’t he the one who rescued you?”
“I was very fortunate he came into his office when he did. Without him I’d still be out there, a prisoner.” The princess’s brown eyes don’t move from the reporter’s face. She doesn’t look at the camera. Or at me.
“He’s certainly become the hero of the hour.” Meryl’s smile is saccharine—sugar cubes dunked in syrup. “The emergency elections are scheduled to take place tomorrow and according to polls, the tides have turned in the M.A.F.’s favor. Julian Forsythe will become prime minister, which should make it much easier for all the mortal defense and anti-integration bills to pass through the houses of Parliament. Do you have any thoughts on this?”
“Richard believed we could live in harmony with the Fae. That their presence would enrich our lives and launch us into a new age of progress. But my brother believed many things which have turned out not to be true. It seems he was being deceived.” There’s a slight tremor in Anabelle’s voice. She’s an excellent actress. If she’s acting. Her eyes don’t find me again. Not even once. “I think we should do what we must to keep this kingdom safe. If that means appointing a new prime minister, then so be it. The Fae are dangerous. They can’t be trusted.”
Kieran is still standing in the ruin of marigolds. Staring. Even from here I can see the rawness of his face.
Meryl stumbles into the long stretch of Anabelle’s silence with a squeaking question. “So you would say this experience has swayed your stance in favor of segregation?”
Anabelle’s face tilts farther toward the camera, but her stare lodges straight into me.
“We’re better off without them,” she says.
I follow the princess around like a desperate puppy all afternoon. She’s pacing the way Richard used to when he was upset. Round and round the maze of Kensington. Past the ghosts of old men looming in oil portraits. Past all the many windows which look out on the world’s bleakness: London passing, trees stripped and crippled by autumn.
Eric follows the princess too, copying her wordless march around the palace. And Kieran—I haven’t seen him since we left the gardens. He can’t have gone far; his veiling spell is still choked tight around me. The only thing between me and an army of stun guns. I keep waiting for her to return to the bedroom, where Eric’s eyes and stun gun cannot reach.
But Anabelle does anything she can to avoid the bedroom. She has tea with her mother, who spends half of the hour talking about all the dead ends Protection Command has hit in their search for Richard and the other half talking about me. After that Anabelle speaks with the kitchen staff, going over the dinner menu for the tenth time. She confirms the florist and edits the guest list as responses trickle in.
It’s not until she ticks a neat check beside Mr. and Mrs. Julian Forsythe that I finally speak. I don’t care that any odd movement or word of hers could give me away to Eric’s falcon eyes. I have to get this out.
“Belle, please.”
Nothing. Her face is motionless as she guides her pen over the paper.
“What you saw,” I go on, push past the thickness in my throat. “It was a mistake.”
The line she’s striking through a couple’s name wavers; her hand is shaking. The princess puts down the pen and folds the list away.
“I think I’m going to retire for a bit,” she tells Eric. “Last night didn’t bring me much rest and I want to make sure I have plenty of energy for the party tonight.”
I follow her wake to Richard’s old bedroom, Anabelle shuts the door and marches across the carpet, her heels digging deep—punching through fruit and warriors’ faces. The staccato of her step, the cold, clear blaze in her eyes reminds me so very much of her mother.
She stares and stares. Without a word.
“What you saw in the garden. It was a mistake.” Did I say that already? My words feel scrabbling and useless, like a tortoise on its back. “He kissed me and—”
“I saw it all,” she says.
“I love your brother. Very much.” I offer this up like a sacrifice. Wait for her knife.
The princess shuts her eyes. Her fingers press like spindles against her temples, the way they did in the bunker.
“If I could undo it I would,” I go on. “I’ve just been so confused and Kieran has been saying all these things—”
“Stop.” Her eyes fly open. Flash out a kaleidoscope of emotions. The ones which are worming out of her grasp as we speak. “Just stop.”
But I keep going anyway. “Kieran was the one who kissed me. I didn’t—”
“You think this is all about you. That everything’s about you!” Her voice finally breaks, I hear the sharpness in it. Know it exactly for what it is.
The jagged edges of a heart broken.
She’s right. This isn’t about me at all.
It’s about beetroot flans and twisting Aile flames and nights whispering about hunger and the people they wanted to be. It’s about the too-loud of the princess’s laugh and the too-quiet of her denial. It’s about how the princess’s heart was slipping in tandem with mine—called into orbit by the Ad-hene’s gravity.
“Oh, Belle . . .”
I feel the princess’s blood magic stirring, creeping over the bedroom like frost. It settles into my skin, wraps around the many veins and passages of my heart.
We’ve stepped out of dangerous territory and into a minefield.
There are creaks and groans, like frozen water breaking. Suddenly I’m seeing snow. It falls around us, dusting our hair, smothering the rug. Coating the green, velvet chair like ash.
I hold out my palm, catch a flake.
Not snow. Paint.
There are cracks in the ceiling. Snaking off of each other, writhing through the heavenly scene. Splitting apart the angels’ sweet faces, prying their smiles wider. Pieces of them fall, chip by chip, down to the earth they’ve watched for so long.
It’s just paint now. But soon it will be plaster. The cracks will go deeper if Anabelle lets them, bring the roof down.
“Breathe, Belle. You need to center yourself.”
“I need you to leave.” Her voice is glacial. Frozen so thick not even a fire could touch it.
“But what about the dinner? Our plan . . .”
The flakes keep falling, thicker and thicker. The angels are almost gone, their feathers plucked bare.
“After the banquet tonight I never want to see you again. Or him.” Her words are like Black Dogs on a lead. Tugging and snapping. Ready to rip.
The room is so cold it feels like a furnace. Her magic keeps falling, an avalanche threatening to bury us alive. She looks the way she did when she clenched Kieran’s fire in her palms: wild. Unhinged.
And this time, I can’t extinguish it.
“Belle, you have to control it. You can’t let it consume you.” But even as I say this I sense it’s too late. I feel her grief: the shards of her heart spinning across the floor. Beyond repair.
“Get out,” she says with a voice like death. “I won’t ask you again.”
I can’t move. I can only stand in this room. See the ruin of everything. Feel the weight of chaos inside and out.
Anabelle takes a lungful of air and howls, “ERIC!! Help!”
The door bursts open with the fury of a dozen horsemen, but it’s just Eric behind the wood. Sapphire lightning rings his knuckles, ready for anything. Ready for me.
I slip past him, leave the princess and her shredded angels behind.