I’m still reaching for something to hold on to, something to save me from the fall seconds after I jerk awake. My eyes are open, but I still see Guinevere’s crazed face. Her laughter rings through my ears.
I’m breathing hard, staring at the golden moldings of the ceiling. I’ve been asleep for hours.
Richard’s laptop and notes are gone, as well as the newspaper. An antique candelabra sits in their place. Its three flames sputter, offering a small globe of light into the vast room.
It seems Lights-down has already started.
I groan and wipe some hair out of my face. My fingers come back slick with sweat. Traces of the dream still rage under my skin. It felt so real. As if I were there again, watching the Pendragon’s kingdom go down in flames. A fire so hot and strong it made my arm hairs singe. I can still feel the burn. . . .
“You had a nightmare?”
My heart is already racing, but the suddenness of Richard’s voice causes it to explode. He’s in a chair just beyond the candles’ glow, watching me.
“I—” I stop. Swallow. A nightmare. That’s all it was. Just my brain taking fragments of my day. Trying to make sense of the past twenty-four hours.
But terror still clings to the edges of my throat. I look at the trio of flames and all I see is the castle. Twisting arms of fire, eating away an entire kingdom. I lean forward, snuff all three with a single breath. The room swirls into smoky darkness.
I scrape meager magic from my veins, weave it into a whisper: “Inlíhte.”
The room flickers in my weak, watery light. I don’t even have the strength to loop it. The glow is already growing dimmer, shedding brightness every second.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Richard’s voice is hoarse, as if he’s been crying. His face looks so sad in my hungry, fading light. “I thought I lost you, Embers. When you jumped and you didn’t come up . . . It was awful. A thousand hells.”
I think of the newspaper, with Richard’s relentless stare begging me not to jump. I think of the way I tore from his grasp, hurtling myself into those dark and vicious waters.
I should have listened. I should have waited for Helene and the other Frithemaeg to show up. I should have stood by Richard’s side. But I know I couldn’t. If there was another Kelpie, raging and frothing under my feet, I would jump again.
For some reason I thought it would be easy—passing on the baton—letting others handle the fight for me. But the jumping, the fighting—it’s in my blood. It’s everything I’ve ever known. Thousands of years can’t be let go in a single second. Lifetimes can’t be undone so simply.
I don’t know how to tell him this.
“I’m all right, Richard.” My words are timid, hollowed out like bones. “I’m right here.”
“Yes. But—you’re not what you were before. And I think that sometimes you forget that.” I know he doesn’t mean to be cruel. Just the opposite—the love rises up behind his eyes. But his words go deep, remind me of everything I was: Power. Fight. Flight. A maelstrom.
Everything I’m not.
He’s wrong. I never forget. Every single time I see Richard, kiss him, I feel it all: the gain and the loss.
“I love you, Emrys,” he goes on. “I can’t lose you. Not after everything. Promise me you’ll stay safe. Promise me you won’t use your magic like that again.”
I can’t breathe. It’s just like being underwater again. Except there’s no Kelpie. No Thames. Just words jamming my head.
I should promise him this.
But I can’t.
Richard looks at me in that piercing, all-encompassing way of his. Those hazel irises smolder. And I see all of my fear, all of my sadness flung back at me in ghost light.
He knows who I am. He knows I can’t promise.
And still he’s asking.
“You can’t do this to me,” Richard fills my silence. “It’s not fair. I spent hours waiting, not knowing . . .”
“Not fair?” Everything I’ve endured for the past twenty-four hours sweeps back over me. The emptiness of the cell. The horror of Guinevere’s face. The fear of drowning. The anger that I’m not what I was.
And the nightmare—that’s taken all of my feelings, shifted them into the wrong gear.
“Not fair?” My words rage in the dying light. “I just saved your life! I’ve given you everything and you want me to give up more?”
Richard rakes anxious fingers through his hair. His face is crumpled, frowning. “That’s not what I meant—”
“Oh really? Then what did you mean?” My insides are snarl and heat.
Before—when I was power and maelstrom—I always had to bite back my anger. The same way I had to hold back my kisses. For fear of harming Richard in my passion. There’s nothing in my way now. I can unleash all my fury and the Faery light won’t even flicker.
The king doesn’t answer. His face is hidden in his hands.
“I gave up everything for a ghost! You’re never here, Richard. If you’re not at Parliament then you’re at some meeting with Lord Winfred or a hundred different people! But never me!
“Every single day I have to watch the Frithemaeg fly in and out. I have to remember that I can’t. I can’t and you’re gone and it just feels like too much!”
Richard lets out a hot, even breath. “I know things have been crazy. This is the way it has to be, Embers. Just for a while, until Lights-down is firmly established and we have more support in Parliament.”
“And then what? After Lights-down there’s the Reforestation Bill. And after that there will be something else. There will always be something else!”
“We’re creating a new world.” He sounds so solid, unshaken by my verbal cuts. Like he’s too tired to fight. “I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“I wanted us, Richard. Do you realize we haven’t spent an entire day together since I took you to the London Eye? That was over two months ago!”
“Emrys,” his voice turns more serious. “This is my job. My duty. I promised Herne. I gave him my word. For us. So we could be together.”
His words, what he’s saying should make sense. I know this in my head, but my emotions are a snake inside me. Coiling tight, crowding out all logic. I want to make him angry. I want him to fight. Yell. Anything. Anything except sitting there with exhausted, glazed eyes.
So I asked the question I know will cut, dig deep. That kernel of a question Kieran planted in the corner of my mind.
“Is this worth it?”
Richard stares. It takes him a moment to find his voice. It’s still steady. Still flat. “You don’t mean that.”
“Maybe I do! I didn’t give up everything for this!” My arm sweeps through the room. “Not Lights-down or Buckingham or any of it. I gave up my magic for us. For you.”
He closes his eyes. My light is almost out. The Lights-down darkness—so utter and pure—closes in around us.
“You’re not even fighting me.” I can’t tell if I’m yelling or sobbing. Or both. “It’s like you don’t even care.”
“Don’t say that.” His breath is a knife—sharp, edged with pain. “Don’t ever say that.”
“Then do something! Fight me!”
“I can’t!” His yell explodes hot inside my chest.
The Faery light I thought was dead seizes the room. Angry white—bright as toothaches and sunstruck snow—culls out everything: Richard’s knotted jaw and tight, tortured fists, the blood braiding down my arm, the distance between us. We’re both frozen, watching with black-hole eyes as the inlíhte blazes through its second life. Fading . . .
It seems my anger isn’t as safe to express as I thought.
Darkness collapses back over the room.
“Stop,” Richard whispers, his words tangled with fear. “Please stop, Emrys.”
I don’t know if I can. There’s too much inside me. Spinning, hissing. Wanting to lunge, to fight like I always do. I have to get out of here, before I say words I don’t mean. Before I hurt him.
I walk to the door and leave Richard in the dark.