Despite my fears, Kensington Palace still stands.
Yet even if the palace had crumbled to dust, Anabelle’s banquet would go on. The dinner is set up in the Orangery, a slender building off the edge of the garden, where Queen Anne once held many teas and dinners of her own. Its walls are all windows—swallowing the evening light and bathing the room in a hot amber shine, preserving the delicate balance of this moment. Before we slip the drink into Julian Forsythe’s hands.
Kieran and I are sheathed in his veiling spell, tucked in opposite corners of the room, away from the path of the serving staff. I know Anabelle can see us, but she does everything in her power not to look our way. She watches out the window instead, waiting for guests. As the light outside dims, I can see her face more clearly in the glass. Composed and perfect. In the space of hours Anabelle has pulled together two impossible things: a dinner party this lavish and herself.
We watch her, waiting for the ice of her expression to slip. For one of the many panes of glass to crack and shatter. But things stay whole. At least on the outside.
The princess was right: she’s good at controlling things.
Guests start filing in—names from Anabelle’s small, select list. The only one I recognize is Queen Cecilia, who walks almost hand in hand with Jensen, as if terrified to leave his side.
And then, the guest of honor.
The sun is gone by the time Julian Forsythe strides down the gravel path. The only light left comes from the torches which line the way, and the glow of the Orangery’s windows. These catch his eyes, make them electric.
Elaine is with him this time, her frail frame swallowed in a coat of blinding white fur. Her skin is almost as pale, set off only by the sleek dark of her hair and eyes. The only spot of color on her is the bright scarlet swathe of her lipstick.
The doorman offers to take her coat, but Elaine shakes her head, shrugging the fur even farther over her bony shoulders.
“My wife has a chill,” Julian says, guiding his wife into the Orangery with a wide sweep of his arm. “She’ll keep it on, as long as Her Highness approves.”
I frown, thinking of the tightness of his knuckles in that photo, the bruises I imagined. I wonder how deep they go under those layers of fur. Elaine’s dewy eyes are wide, almost skittish as they take in the room. Something like fear passes behind them, quivering under her thin red smile as she greets the princess.
It will all be over soon, I want to tell her. You’ll never have to see this monster again.
“This is your dinner,” Anabelle says in her sweetest voice. “Can I get you anything to drink? A Pimm’s Cup perhaps? I heard it was your favorite during your Oxford days.”
“Did you?” Julian’s eyebrows fly up. “That was ages ago. . . . The stories of your past have a way of catching up with you, don’t they?”
“He doesn’t drink anymore.” The prim and prick of Elaine’s voice suddenly reminds me of why I disliked her so much on the yacht. “He needs a clear head for his job.”
“Prudent.” Anabelle’s face stays ice. “I suppose if there’s anything these past few months have taught us it’s that our government’s leaders must be ready for anything.”
Elaine Forsythe nods. “It’s a dangerous world. I’m just glad men like Julian are taking a stand.”
“Someone must,” Richard’s mother joins the conversation. “Lord Winfred is just as blinded by these creatures as Richard and Anabelle once were. Thank goodness your motion of no confidence passed, Mr. Forsythe. With you as prime minister we can finally do something.”
“I’m not prime minister yet, Your Majesty,” Julian reminds her.
“But you will be. After the election tomorrow,” Queen Cecilia says without a doubt. “And once you are we’ll take more extreme actions to protect our city and find my son.”
Anabelle clears her throat. “The first course should be arriving shortly. I think you should enjoy it, Mr. Forsythe. Oysters fresh from Whitstable, where you grew up.”
“Ah! How thoughtful.” Julian Forsythe’s smile is stunted as he leads Elaine to the table. Her coat blends in with the white of the back wall, the crisp blank of the tablecloth. If it weren’t for the color in her hair and lips, she’d disappear altogether.
Dinner begins. Attendants bring out silver platters, trailing mouthwatering scents as they make their way around the table. I stand in my corner, still as death, watching Julian Forsythe. That wilted grin stays on his face while he wields his utensils as delicately as a calligrapher’s pen. A silver goblet of water gleams by his right hand—shimmering full of the drugs we need him to take. Every muscle in my body keeps winding tight as I wait for him to take a sip.
He doesn’t drink.
Anabelle watches the glass too. By the second course her smile is shorter, fading.
When the third course arrives Anabelle’s smile vanishes altogether. From where I stand I see her hands wringing under the table. Knuckles knotting into knuckles.
I move to Kieran’s corner, dodging trays of stuffed wild mushrooms and glazed Cornish game hens. The Ad-hene’s expression is brooding, his signature stone stare taking everything in: the queue of diners, the muted flower arrangements, the china plates full of extravagant food.
I’m so close to him our arms are nearly touching. The prickle hasn’t returned. Not since I shouted it away in those tunnels. Banished it like a demon.
“What do we do now?” I ask.
“Wait until the moment is right,” he says this without looking away. I follow his stare.
Anabelle sits close. Even from such a short distance away I have trouble picking out any flaws. Her perfect summer-gold hair, her skin soft under the light of the table’s candelabras. The dress she’s wearing tonight is silvery; it glows under the candlelight like the Ad-hene’s scars.
I look back at Kieran, see the princess’s form in miniature, shining through the iron of his eyes.
“Do you think she really loved me?” His question is quiet, but it hangs heavy. I try to make sense of it. Why he’s asking. Why it matters. Why he speaks in past tense, as if the end has already been written.
I look at the princess again. From this angle I cannot see her twisting hands. Just as I can’t see any sign of the agony which swept over her this afternoon. The heel-crushed heart which colored her words, fed her magic.
“I know you really hurt her,” I answer, thinking of the paint flake storm.
“I’m sorry.” Kieran’s voice is as cracked as Kensington’s ceilings. He’s still looking at Anabelle as if she’s the only soul in the room. “Know that I’m sorry.”
The chandeliers’ light cuts out. The Orangery becomes an archipelago of candlelit faces. Garden torches glare against the window panes, so the whole wall looks as if it’s on fire. Gasps rise from the table, swelling louder with every second the dark stays.
“It’s them! They’ve come back for you, Your Highness!” Julian Forsythe rises from his chair, a jerking motion which sends his goblet tumbling. A harsh light blooms from his hand. The sight of it fills me with sick.
“We have to do something!” I reach out for Kieran’s arm. But where I expect his solid, steady build, I find only empty space.
Kieran is gone. And so is his veiling spell.
Queen Titania—in all her stubborn pride—was right.
I never should have trusted the Ad-hene.
This revelation burns through me along with stares and darkness. Every burnished face at the table is tilted in my direction—their expressions slowly melting into horror. Elaine Forsythe lets out a terrible whimper.
Her husband moves in a flash. Julian Forsythe’s hand rises, a fist. I see his tattoo clearly: a ring of runes inked around the veins of his wrist. Lit blue by the glow between his knuckles. Not a spell like I thought, but a stun gun.
He’s coming for me, with the same tiger lunge Mordred performed in dream after dream.
The force which rushes through me as soon as Julian’s fist meets my skin feels almost like magic. It’s the stab of a hundred wasp stings all across my body, freezing my muscles, binding me with electricity. All of me collapses on the marble floor, deadweight.
The stun gun charge is gone, but I still cannot move. All I can do is stare, helpless, watching everything unfold like a dream before me. Julian Forsythe stepping away. Queen Cecilia’s beetroot-flushed cheeks: all shock. Anabelle’s expression as frozen as my muscles. And then Eric’s face: furious and twisted like some cornered wildcat as he bends over me. Hauls me to my feet.
On the other side of the room Julian barks orders. “Check for others. She’s not working alone.”
I want to speak, I want to scream out the truth to all of those wax-figure diners. How the real threat is standing in front of them, cloaked in all the handsome manners of an Oxford graduate. But my words are trapped inside, caught in the jellyfish stun of Julian’s knuckles.
My eyes catch Anabelle’s, but the ice of her magic I felt this afternoon has only grown. The princess is sheathed in it now. Controlled, yet impenetrable.
She watches Eric drag me away without a word.
The garden path is all flicker and fire, shadows dancing over hedges and gravel. Everything feels unsteady in the blackout’s fresh dark, as if the whole world has tilted on its side. My muscles begin to throb as Eric pulls me down the Orangery’s front steps. I stay deadweight anyway, hoping he won’t notice and stun me again. I let my feet drag: two long, sliding protests in the path’s gravel. My mind churns frantically through plans of escape.
Jensen and other Protection Command officers join Eric’s side, talking into radios and shining electric lights into the dark between the hedges. A wind rushes through the garden: winter’s breath tearing at the evergreens. So strong, so cold, that it snuffs many of the pathway’s torches. Eric stops at the sudden dark. I wait for him to drop me and rearm his stun gun, but he keeps still.
After several seconds I realize the other officers are just as motionless. The wind is gone and the remaining torches don’t flicker. Eric gapes over me like an opera singer mid-note, his eyes glazed. The world is caught in a single moment—bound by some strangely wrought spell.
This magic hasn’t just frozen people. There are no sounds. No motion. Nothing. Time has been suspended. There’s only this moment, reaming through itself over and over with no signs of stopping.
The Orangery doors swing open. Julian Forsythe appears in its gap, his wife on his arm. They walk together—their steps deafening through the gravel. Elaine’s stilettos stamp through the mark my heels left. I hang from Eric’s frozen arms like a criminal caught in the stocks, awaiting my final sentence.
Julian stops only a few steps away. His arm stays tight around his wife’s coat, digging into that white fur.
“I know who you are, Mordred.” I shout his name like a challenge. “So let’s drop the subtleties and—”
“Mordred?” Elaine Forsythe’s eyes startle, go wide. She looks her husband up and down. “Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long, long time.”
A smile curls up onto those crimson lips, coy as a cat’s tail. She goes on, “Do you know I’d nearly forgotten about him? It’s hard to remember faces when you spend so many years in the dark.”
Her smile keeps rising and I feel my stomach falling. Swirling into itself like water down a drain.
I was wrong.
Elaine’s arm slides out of Julian’s grip. Her fingers start drawing back her coat, exposing the snowy skin of her breastbone. Mink fur falls away, slides down her arms. Her dress is all black, melting like silk into the night, covering her arms in long lace sleeves.
No. I squint closer through frozen firelight. Not lace. Not even sleeves. The entirety of her arms is covered in ink: thousands upon thousands of tiny rune tattoos, so close and cramped together that her skin is more dark than white. Novels of spells and power etched into her very flesh.
The markings of a sorceress.
She turns and I see how the dress dips down her back in a luxurious V. The runes are there too, so small and complicated even the pure skin between them looks like a foreign language.
“Be a dear and hold my coat for me?” She looks at Julian Forsythe, her voice all bright. “And would you go inside the Orangery and make sure everything is in order? The faagailagh and I need to have a little chat.”
Julian doesn’t hesitate. He takes the armfuls of fur and walks back the way he came, into the Orangery. He leaves the door open and I see Anabelle seated at the table, her gaze suspended on the garden path, seeing nothing as this sorceress from another age faces me in the dark.
“The runes on his wrist . . . ,” I think aloud. “You put those there. You’re using spells to control him.”
“Catching on, are we?” She twists her white swan neck until the joints pop—a sound like die being cast. Her face turns in the preserved light and I see lines spidering onto the skin around her eyes. Growing in front of me.
I hang limp in Eric’s arms, mind spinning. “Who are you?”
The sorceress doesn’t answer; she’s noticed the web of wrinkles too. Her hand dips into the folds of her dress, produces a sharp, ebony quill. She places the fanged tip at the end of her wrist—where the skin is still sheet white—and starts to carve. Blood and pigment swirl down her palm, together black as she incants old, old words. With every syllable, every deeper dig of the quill the age which appeared so quickly on her skin vanishes.
“Feeling your years?” I ask when she puts back the loaded quill.
“Routine maintenance. Not all immortality can be sustained as effortlessly as the Fae’s. Runecraft, unfortunately, cannot be looped. Spells fade and must be rewritten. It’s kept me busy all these years.” She looks down at the hundreds of tiny symbols on her arms. “It seems I’m finally running out of room. I’ll have to find myself a new skin. A shame. This body has seen so much.”
But who is this body? What did I miss?
I try my question again, in a different form. “Runecraft was never common in Camelot. Where did you learn it?”
The sorceress doesn’t ignore me this time. The dew vanishes from her dark eyes—become a stare which twists into me like a maelstrom. “You should know, Lady Emrys. You were one of those who sent me across the sea.”
Her words hiss and spit. A memory settles in, drifts into the cracks of my mind like stray ashfall. It was one of my first shifts as a Frithemaeg Guard. The day I followed King Arthur and a train of his knights down to the sea—where the boat waited. His sister rode close to me: a sallow-faced girl with limbs like twigs. Never saying a word while Arthur greeted her betrothed with a handshake and a formal treatise. It was the sister’s shoulders which gave her away. They were rigid as grave markers as she watched the sails of the longboat hoist high, prepare to steal her to the shores of Normandy. To the castle of a lord more than twice her age.
I remember, even then, feeling sorry for her. This slip of a girl, being sacrificed to keep the peace. Married off to a foreign warlord. Never to be seen again. I’d always thought ill of Arthur for it.
“You’re Arthur’s sister. Morgaine le Fay.” The whisper hardly leaves me before I remember Guinevere’s words, the ones which made the princess shudder and shrink behind my back: Sister of a king. Across the sea and back again. Even sisters fail us in the end.
Guinevere hadn’t been talking about Anabelle at all. She was fighting the silencing spell, trying to tell us about Morgaine.
The sorceress’s lips curl back at the sound of the Pendragon’s name. Red as fresh hurt. “Half sister technically. But no one ever seems to remember that. I was the oldest of King Uther’s children. My blood was the purest, the most royal. Arthur was the bastard son of a scullery maid, and still he was favored for the throne.
“We grew up together in my father’s palace. We shared everything and we were close in age, yet we were as different as the sun and moon. Everyone saw it. Even Merlin, our magic tutor. He taught us together at first. Small things like hemming gowns without a stitch and mixing healing poultices. Then he taught us how to channel our emotions and work larger spells. I was the stronger one, I always was. But as our lessons progressed Merlin started favoring Arthur. The sorcerer told me I was not ready—even though I was better at magic than my half brother. I was too angry, he said. I had too much darkness in me.” Morgaine’s eyes harden like the torches’ enchanted light. “But my half brother—a weakling boy who slept by ten lanterns because he was scared of the dark—Merlin found a way to thread magic into his very blood. Arthur became powerful enough to move mountains and I was stuck with tricks any hedge-witch could muster for a few copper pieces.
“Merlin refused to continue my magical education, so I taught myself. My father died and Arthur, the bastard prince, was crowned king. He sat on the throne which was rightfully mine and I hated him for it. My hate grew stronger and my magic did too. Strong enough to fight my half brother and become queen. But Merlin discovered my research before I could take the throne and warned my brother of what was to come. Arthur would not believe it at first, but when he came to my chambers to confront me, I fought him. I’d always thought my brother a weakling, but whatever powers Merlin gave him were stronger. Arthur snapped my staff, burned my grimoires, and banished me from the kingdom in secret. He was too kindhearted even to subject me to public shame. He pretended to marry me off, for my dignity. I was shipped to a land of tattooed savages, exiled from the kingdom I should have ruled.
“But that hardly stopped me.” Morgaine looks down the length of her bare arms—storied and spelled. “In the land of savages I became a savage. I learned their magic, carved their runes into my skin. Each symbol means something different: life, power, strength, control. There are hundreds, thousands of spells which can be written out, in skin or on walls, unleashed at just the moment I choose.
“When I had learned all I could, I returned to Camelot. But Arthur’s blood magic was too strong for me to face outright, even with my runecraft. So I watched from the shadows. I watched as Arthur fell in love with a Fae. I watched knights and peasants alike praise his name. I watched him sit on my throne, wear my crown. I watched all this and I waited for the perfect moment to take back the kingdom.”
“And then you destroyed everything,” I say, trying to keep up with all the puzzle pieces which are now click, click, clicking into place. Too many to count. “It wasn’t Mordred at all. You were controlling him with the runes, the same way you’ve been controlling Julian.”
“Is that who they credit for Pendragon’s doom?” One of the sorceress’s raven eyebrows lifts high. “Mordred was a pawn. I needed his armies to assure my victory.”
“And Guinevere?”
“Ah yes. The other faagailagh. Key to my brother’s golden heart.” Disgust curdles her words. “Merlin taught us that emotions were the key to our magic’s strength. Arthur always did draw from love. A vulnerable, feeble emotion—one which breaks. It didn’t take long for me to realize that Arthur’s magic and heart were tied up in Guinevere. She was the crack in his armor. His weakness. And she herself was weak, undone by a handsome knight and one of my love spells. As soon as Arthur learned that his dear bride had ridden off with Lancelot, his magic faltered, and I struck.
“I stood on the hill and watched it all turn to ruin. But it wasn’t enough. I wanted Arthur to see my face before he died. I wanted him to know I was taking back my kingdom.”
“So you killed him? After Mordred stabbed him?” After I’d left, flown back to Mab’s court in a flurry of anger and fear.
“I wanted to watch him suffer, but I waited too long. The Faery queen came like Judgment Day.” A sigh leaves her. Almost dream-like. “All white and fury. So much power. I’d studied Arthur’s magic. I knew his weakness. But I had not prepared for a Faery of Queen Mab’s caliber. My runecraft was no match. The Faery queen threw me into the Labyrinth’s darkness, thought she had taken care of the problem. Much the same way my half brother did. Again I found myself robbed of a crown, stripped of freedom.
“Again I endured. I knew my prison wouldn’t last forever. Nothing does, after all. I kept myself alive with runecraft and rage. I knew that once I found a way out, I would have my vengeance on the Fae. I’d get my kingdom back.”
I think of the cell—its furious runes. Years of agony and revenge chiseled into the very walls of the earth. That same feeling—that same black sick which roiled through the bars, haunted my dreams—stands here in the garden. Morgaine’s voice still gleams as bright as a collector’s prized coin and her face remains a strange beauty.
But the inside of her . . . her aura. It’s every hurt, every long stretching second of the Labyrinth’s dark, every drop of Arthur’s blood, every needle which ever marked her skin. If Anabelle was all whirlwind and blizzard, then this . . . It’s all blackness. A powerful, soulless void. Swirling and pulling and tugging and wanting to consume. Like those forces in the far reaches of the heavens which have the power to eat the stars whole.
Morgaine keeps speaking, all calm. “It didn’t take long to persuade the Ad-hene to my side. Not after the Faery queen tricked them in their most desperate moment: turning their home into a prison, binding them into her service. They wanted freedom and vengeance on the Fae as badly as I; they were only too eager to help. But they couldn’t undo the wards Mab placed on my cell.
“But then Mab was unmade and her wards vanished. I found I could bend my bars. The Ad-hene guided me back into the light and I found a world where the Frithemaeg’s power is crippled by technology. A place where mortals know little of magic. A land ripe for the taking.
“But the more I studied this new world, the more I realized I could not claim the crown openly,” she goes on, “not without calling an army of Frithemaeg and a horde of angry mortals on my head. But there was quite a crack in this kingdom’s armor: the gap between mortals and Fae. I knew I could pry it wider, fill it with chaos. So I used Julian’s speeches to stir up mortals’ fears; I organized King Richard’s kidnapping to springboard the emergency elections. Tomorrow Julian will become prime minister, and I will have the power to spread technology so far that Fae will be wiped off this island forever.” Her smile flashes teeth and I think of the runes on Mordred’s ebony armor, the tattoo circling Julian Forsythe’s wrist.
Circles. Back again.
A new Camelot means a new fall.
“You won’t get away with this,” I hiss at her. “As soon as Queen Titania realizes what you’re doing—”
“But that’s the beauty of it,” Morgaine is still all teeth and smile. “She won’t. The Frithemaeg are gone, and even when they were here they did not see me working in the shadows. All they see are the puppets—the show in front of the curtain. And that, Lady Emrys, will go on. Whether you decide to join me or not.”
“Join you? Never!” I try my best to spit the word, but my mouth is so dry. Parched in fear of this void woman before me.
“I wouldn’t be so quick to refuse if I were you,” the sorceress says. “You haven’t heard my offer yet.”
“I’m not so desperate for power.” My throat croaks and rasps, weakness.
Morgaine’s laughter is like knife blades: iron and clanging through the cold. Her breath curls high, melts into the vast void of night above us. “You say it as if it’s such a terrible thing. To want power. Yet that’s all anyone ever really wants, isn’t it? These men in fancy suits might talk of justice and peace. The women hanging from their arms might speak of love and drink tea from fancy china, but behind it all, they’re just animals struggling to reach the top of the heap. Savages who will do anything to get what they want.
“Take Eric Black here—an officer who swore a solemn oath to protect the king. All it took was a few of Julian’s speeches, a personal invitation to M.A.F. leadership, and he kidnapped His Majesty straight out of the carriage. To him, a little power was worth a great deal of treason.
“Or take the Ad-hene. All I had to do was offer them a new set of tunnels they could rule all their own, and they were willing to set me free and lie to the Faery queen.
“Even you want it.” Morgaine’s smile curls like a velvet Christmas ribbon. “Ever since my escape I’ve been watching you, Emrys Léoflic. At first I did not believe the rumors that you’d become a faagailagh. That a spirit as strong as you would throw all your power away for a man’s sake. But then I saw you on the Winfreds’ yacht. I saw the way you looked at Richard—how you clutched his arm—and I knew the rumors were true. Like Guinevere, you’d given up, become weak.
“But then I saw you jump. I saw the look in your eyes when you dove after that Kelpie and I knew you still had strength inside. Potential for greatness. A power I could use. So I decided to test you.”
My mind is racing, webbing through stories of Camelot and shadows and what lies beneath. If Julian is playing the role of Mordred and I am so like Guinevere . . . then the parallels must keep stretching. “You tested me with Kieran. You were using him, just like you used Lancelot.” I think of all those silver words, all those moments the Ad-hene touched me and my insides prickled with magic and mysterious want. Smaller at first, up, up, up until that desperate, last-ditch kiss. When I broke away and it all vanished. “He was dosing me with a love spell, trying to seduce me. . . .”
“When Alistair informed me that he’d sent one of his own to aid you, the opportunity was too good to resist. But seduction was only a part of it.” Her scarlet smile wreathes into a smirk. “The Ad-hene are excellent guides and I needed him to guide you to the edge. Force you to choose, so I could see where your true desires lie.”
“And where is that?” I grit my teeth.
“In the realm of the impossible. You want a life you cannot have, Emrys Léoflic. It wasn’t Kieran who was tempting you. Not really. What tortures you, what tears your heart, is the magic you lost. That need Richard can never fill, no matter how much you love him. Richard or power. That’s always the question in the back of your mind, isn’t it?”
I feel like her eyes have sliced me open, peeled back layers of muscle and bone, rooted out all the ugly truths.
“I made my choice,” I tell her, remind myself. Richard. The life I want more.
“What if you don’t have to choose?” Morgaine walks closer, heels grinding down the garden path. The scent off her pale skin is honey and coal dust: the bitterest of sweet. It fills my nostrils as she steps close, leans in. “I can give you both.”
Her nearness is dizzying. My eyes swim, and it looks almost as if the runes—all the spells she etched into her arms over the years—are flowing as they reach for me. Her fingers wrap around my wrist, cold as bands of iron as she pries me free from Eric’s grip. She stretches my arm out, yanks up my sleeve.
“Serve me. Take my runes into your flesh and I’ll allow your king to live. I’ll teach you runecraft, return all the power your heart has ached for.” Her words glide through the night air, smooth as a serpent’s belly. I stare down at my arm, try to imagine what Morgaine’s marks would look like, snaking up its pure peach skin.
She must need my permission to slide the ink into my veins. She wouldn’t be asking otherwise.
“I wouldn’t ask much,” she says softly. “You’ll keep an eye on your king, of course. Make sure he does not interfere with my plans. I’ll only call upon your powers when I need you.”
“You want me to control Richard. . . . You want us to be your puppets.” Like Mordred and Julian. Like Blæc and the Ad-hene. I wonder what she offered them. What lives they couldn’t refuse.
“You’d be taking a great burden off his shoulders. Without the pressures of leading, Richard would have all the time in the world for you. It’s what you both want. Isn’t it?”
I think of the cabin on the shores of the loch. Its empty rooms waiting to be filled: with blankets and laughter and Richard’s fingers dancing through my hair, over my skin. Over my inked, mottled skin . . .
Morgaine’s fingers grip tighter. Pain creeps up my wrist, shatters the thought of Richard’s face.
“And if I don’t?” I ask, though I already know the answer.
She drops my arm. Her lips purse. “I’m afraid you’re too much of a threat. If you refuse my offer, then tonight when midnight strikes the Palace of Westminster will collapse into flames. King Richard’s body will be found underneath the rubble and yours with it. But not to worry, your deaths would be quite productive. The Fae will be blamed for his assassination and the M.A.F. will sweep tomorrow’s elections, making my dear husband the new prime minister. I’ll find another royal puppet to fill the throne and the show will go on. Either way I win. Either way I gain control of my kingdom.”
I look down at my arm. It’s covered in goose bumps, white as marble. The skin where Morgaine’s fingers were is red. Stinging.
If I take her ink into my skin, I’ll never be mine. No matter how much power I gain. I’ll never be Richard’s. No matter how many precious hours I spend wrapped up in his arms.
I’ll be hers.
Sucked so entirely into the black of her soul. Swallowed with the stars.
I would become that. Emptiness collapsing into emptiness. Hate crumbling into hate. Round and round it goes. A widening gyre.
Down.
Down.
Down.
Down.
A down which never ends.
This time I cannot jump to save Richard’s life. I cannot do what it takes to protect him. But it’s not because I’m weak.
I think of her aura again . . . so empty, so hungry. Never filled. I knew that feeling once. I brushed the edge of it that summer night when I was sprawled across the stones of fortress ruins. When I knew that meeting Richard had changed everything. That the edges of my soul were jagged with a hole only he could fill.
I think of this and look back at Morgaine. “Have you ever loved anyone?”
The beauty of the sorceress’s face spoils as if her rune of youth has already expired. But it’s only disgust wrinkling her brow, twisting her lips into a snarl.
Such a hard, impenetrable soul. Spun into so much darkness. Crystallized into a cocoon of death. A coffin nailed tight. I can only feel sorry for her.
“If you had, you’d know your offer is useless,” I say.
If she hears the pity in my voice, she doesn’t show it. “And so you choose to throw your life away. Again. How disappointing.”
Morgaine snaps her fingers and the garden’s dark shifts. The gaps between the hedges fill with faces. The sharp, fault-line features of sixteen Ad-hene loom in the torchlight.
Alistair steps in front of the rest. He doesn’t look at me at all. His lazy lids are focused solely on the sorceress. “Yes?”
“The Ad-hene’s bargain has been fulfilled,” she says. “The tunnels I’ve marked are yours to loop as soon as you escort Emrys underground.”
“Thank you, Lady le Fay.”
“Now go. I have some memories to modify.” Morgaine reaches out for Eric’s frozen face. Her nails sink deep into his cheek, carve out skin like a carrot peeler. She stares at me, smiling as her nails run all the way down to his jaw. “Though after the tray incident I don’t think it will take much to convince him you did this, in your desperate attempt to escape.”
The scratches must be deep because Eric’s blood washes down Morgaine’s fingers. Staining that white skin, mixing into the rune ink.
I look away, down the row of stoic faces and see Kieran, lurking in the far fringe of the hedges. Finally, finally, his stare is not on me. It’s not on anything. It’s adrift, floating through the night in front of him, glossing over the Orangery’s windows.
I want him to look at me. I want to gut him through, the way Anabelle did.
But he doesn’t care. He never truly understood. There was never a word out of his mouth which wasn’t a twisting lie, a means to an end, a key to his prison.
He’s stone, like all the others.