The midday sun beats down, glaring summer heat off the metal grating of our café table. The brightness, its diamond-scale pattern of light, forces me to squint. But that doesn’t stop Richard from staring.
“What are you looking at?” I laugh, my finger circling endless laps around the rim of my mug. My latte is untouched despite the hours we’ve lounged at this sidewalk coffee shop talking and soaking up the morning. Always the I love you is on the edge of my throat, waiting to be said. But right now, even in this perfect afternoon of coffee and talk, I can’t seem to find the courage.
“You.” His smile stretches long, like a sun-drunk cat. “I was just thinking about how beautiful you are.”
Dozens of men and women shift by our table, gripping packaged sushi and wrapped sandwiches as they plow their way down the sidewalk and back toward their offices. Normally, with my veiling spell down, I would feel naked, aware of every strange look. But here, across from Richard, watching him watching me, I feel like one of the only souls left in the world.
“The way the sun is playing through your hair—you look alight.” Richard reaches out, strokes his fingers through my locks. “And your eyes. Always your eyes.”
He leans in closer, so that I feel his breath grazing my cheek. Deliciously hot. Here (away from the bed’s feathery sheets), I think it will be easier to stop. I let our lips collide, press soft into each other. He tastes like coffee and earth—something rich. I linger in it until I feel the magic buzzing, tearing up my throat like nausea.
For now, it is enough.
I lean back on my chair, its finely wrought iron etching hard into my spine, and try hard not to think about what will happen when it isn’t enough. What I’ll have to choose.
“So where do you want to go? Saint Paul’s? The Tower of London?” Richard takes a long sip of his drink and pulls out some money for the check.
We’ve spent the day layered in magic. My energy is stretched, constantly feeding spells to shield the king’s identity from the hundreds of people passing us. Much of my senses are dedicated to being alert. Although the city streets are sunlit and crowded, I shouldn’t dismiss the possibility of an attack.
Richard senses that part of me is on edge. Once we get up from the table and start walking, he pulls me close. His touch brings me back into the moment, into the day I should be enjoying. I’m determined to enjoy these hours. To enjoy Richard before I face the guillotine.
“No, not the Tower.” I shake my head, steer us toward the river. “I have an idea.”
“This is nice.” Richard sighs, contented, as we walk. “I’ve never been able to enjoy the city like this, outside of a car, away from the crowds and security guards.”
A smile flutters, fragile, across my face. I scan the endless string of passersby, going breathless at any flash of green. “Well, you’re not entirely free of guards. You never are.”
“You don’t count, Embers.”
We reach the Thames. Under the full force of daylight, the river seems more disparaging than mystical. Its water is thick and brown, carrying bits of rubbish with every extra push of the current. Tourists and Londoners alike walk past without so much as a backward glance. But then, they never knew what the Thames once was. When the great stretch of water was surrounded by nothing but moorland. When every bend and curve of the great river spoke of strength.
Sickness kicks up in the pit of my stomach with a sudden vengeance. My steps falter and I bend, drawing quick, gritty breaths to keep the queasiness at bay. Richard halts with me.
“Are you all right?”
“It’s nothing.” The words leave me in a gasp. Although the pain has been latent over the past few weeks, its return is fiery and lancing. My knees nearly buckle under it.
“It doesn’t look like nothing.” Richard sets his coffee on the stone ledge and wraps his arms around me. His grip is steady, holding me up when I would have fallen.
In a single moment, I lose all of the sparse contents of my stomach. The sip of coffee I tried an hour earlier and half of a croissant paint the sidewalk all sorts of unappetizing colors. Bitterness curdles, stains my lips. I wipe them hard with my shirtsleeve.
Richard guides me gently away from the puddle of vomit, lets me lean against the stone wall that borders the river. “What set it off?”
“I . . . I don’t know.” My voice is weaker than I’d like. “I think . . . I’ve been using a lot of magic today. More than usual.”
“For us to go on this date?” Richard frowns. “Do you want to go back to the palace? We can sit in the gardens and you could get some rest.”
I stay still for a moment, willing the pain in my stomach to go back to its usual, tolerable ache. Slowly, grudgingly, it retreats, leaves me be.
We should go back, considering what Breena and I are going to do tonight. I’ll need as much energy and magic as I can muster. But I know that if I turn back now, my courage will crumble.
“No.” I shake my head. “Not yet.”
“Are you sure?” His fingers tangle into a coppery strand of my hair as he brushes it back behind my ears. “We could do this another time.”
No. The time is now. It has to be. I swallow the tremble out of my voice and start walking, pulling Richard with me. “I’m sure.”
The riverfront passes by our slow, together steps. An artist stands at the far side of the walk, squinting out at the Thames with a brush wedged between her lips, teal paint streaking her cheek. Couples, so much like us, walk with fingers linked, stopping at various points in the stone wall to point at the scene beyond the chocolate waters. A young man with gnarled, knotted hair sits on a bench, plucking a guitar.
If you embrace this city and crawl under its skin . . . there’s something here. I remember Breena’s words. How, despite the sickness, I’m not the only Fae who’s lost herself to these people, this place. Slowly and surely it’s swallowing us all.
“Where are we going again?” Richard asks.
“It’s not far. Just a few blocks down, actually.”
“That doesn’t leave too many options. Are we going to go gape at Parliament? Or maybe Westminster Abbey?” He lists the sights with a jaded tone, as though he’s certain nothing down the Thames will be new to him.
“No.” I smile coyly, satisfied he hasn’t guessed. “We’re going to look at your kingdom.”
He frowns, perplexed by my comment. We continue down the river at a solid stroll, our silence filled by the hungry bprrrs of pigeons and the distant blare of horns. Richard’s face lights with understanding when I pull him into the winding queue beneath the giant white Ferris wheel.
“The Eye,” he mutters under his breath. “You’re talking about the London Eye.”
“You haven’t been on it, have you?” I rise on tiptoes to see past the dozens of people in front of us. The queue snakes slowly forward, passing a glassy ticket booth before mounting the ramps to step into the clear, creeping capsules.
“You’ve brought me to the one thing in London I haven’t experienced.” He cranes his neck to take in the massiveness of the wheel. “Two, really. Queues and the Eye.”
“I could magic us to the front.” I frown. Are there always so many mortals clamoring for a taste of flight? The queue is so sluggish it makes my skin itch.
Richard laughs so loudly that the family in front of us turns and stares. “No need. I’m perfectly content to stay here and wait with you. It’s not every day I get to stand in a queue. Besides”—his voice drops—“I don’t want you to get sick again.”
“I’m fine.” But even as I say this, I don’t know if I am. My insides are churning: Tell him. Tell him. Tell him.
So we wait, side by side, talking about things eavesdroppers will find useless. Though I don’t use any spells to advance our way down the queue, I do cast a small charm when we finally step into the clear glass observatory. While the capsule has enough room for over twenty people, I secure a single car for just us. So we can be alone.
The wheel pulls us above the city in a lethargic rise. I feel like the dawning sun, really seeing and discovering London—looking down on the tangled monuments and buildings, the milling ants of people.
Richard’s nose presses against the glass, his breath creating steam spots on the capsule’s curved walls. All of his attention has been pulled into the city and its endless string of details. The three spires of Saint Paul’s pointing gold into a robin’s-egg sky, summer-green trees lining the Thames, boats and barges sliding under bridges arched like a skipping stone. Parliament, so small it looks like some kind of sandstone Gothic cake.
“It looks different from the sky. I mean, I’ve seen it from airplanes and stuff, but never like this.”
“Strangely beautiful, isn’t it?” I come up next to him, place my palms against the glass.
“Beautiful . . .” Richard is both beside me and before me. Solid flesh and phantom reflection. Both versions of him smile. “Is this what it’s like? Flying?”
“Not exactly.” How do you describe flying to someone ground-bound? It’s like trying to describe food to someone who’s never eaten. Or air to a person who’s never drawn breath.
And then I think of what it would be like, being always on the ground, forever tied to some surface. I look at my own feet, how flat they are against the pod’s metal-plated floor. Just at the tip of my toes is the edge where metal meets glass, what few inches keep us from a fall of meters upon meters. I see the ground, patched gray and brown below, and my head starts to spin.
“You’re lucky. Being able to fly.” Richard is still talking into the glass, looking out at the great heights he’ll never be able to reach by himself. “Most people would kill for that.”
I look back at him.
Richard or flying. Richard or everything I’ve known and been my entire life.
The human and the Fae writhe inside me, snapping and hissing dragon flame. One of them has to die.
“Richard?”
He looks when I say his name, his eyes boring into me as they always have, setting every piece of molecule and matter that is me alight.
I think of what I want to say, what I’ve been holding back for hours, days. If I let it out . . . There’s so much more at stake than his denial. In fact, if he says no, if the blade lets down and my head and heart spill away, it might almost be a mercy. It will spare me the choice of tearing myself apart.
“What is it?” he asks. His eyebrows dive, become a pen-stroke V, the way a child draws a flying seagull.
They rise up: the old Emrys and the new. The desire against what-has-always-been.
Is he enough? they ask. If he says yes, promises to be with you always and gives you everything you want, will he be enough? Will the hole be filled?
“I don’t know,” I say aloud, hoping the words will silence the chaos in my head. Let me think.
He stares. Unyielding as a sphinx.
I turn away, walk to the bench in the middle of the capsule. I look through the clearness on the other side. There’s no reflection from the curve of that glass, but I still see faces. I see Guinevere and Isidore. Alene and Kaelee. I see the men they loved. The ones they left us for. All gone, now dust and memory.
I remember them, everything they gave up, and I know that I can’t promise Richard my love without everything else too. There’s no point.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know,” I say again.
I hear Richard’s steps behind me, light and metallic. “It’s okay, Emrys.”
He sits on the bench, slides his way down next to me so our shoulders are touching. Richard reaches over; his finger shaves up the side of my cheek. It pulls away, glistening, and I realize with a start that I’ve been crying.
“I do know. I’ve known for a while now . . . but the timing has never been right.” His voice is deep and everything in this glass chamber. “And I’ve been scared. Scared of what you’ll say and scared of what this means for you. For us.”
I look into his face—the goodness of it. He’s studying the clump of my tears shining against his knuckle. It catches the light, a tiny inverted mirror of our world rolling down Richard’s skin, falling to the bench between us.
His eyes lock into mine. Steady, sure. “I love you, Emrys.”
He loves me. Me. My heart stretches full with the joy of these words. For a fleeting moment I’m giddy, until I feel the strain of tendon and aorta. The fight that’s still there, the tension of magic and mortal.
I want to respond, but what can I say? How can I profess a love I can’t commit to? How can I say anything except yes?
Richard goes on. “I know it’s impossible—us together. I know what you would have to give up, and I could never ask that of you. But I just need you to know how I feel.”
The tears come back as I try to smile at him. I lose sight of his face.
“It’s been a good day,” he says softly. “Thank you for it.”
His arms swallow my shoulders, so much comfort and togetherness. I rest my head against his chest—it seems unhindered by my weight, ready to carry anything. I lean on him and watch the world rise up to receive us. Parliament tower’s owl-eye clock face winks against the sun as we draw level with it, start to descend.
“You know, I was thinking,” Richard begins.
“Hm?”
“I want you to meet my sister. You’ve become such a big part of my life that it feels weird, her not knowing you.” His words rumble through me, almost as if I’m a part of his body. “But only if you want to. And if it’s okay with your Faery friends.”
I shift, remolding myself into his chest. “I’d like that.”
“I’ll set up a lunch, then.”
I rest against him a little longer, listening as his heartbeat drums me a personal lullaby. The capsule groans, creeping like a wandering feather toward the Thames and the crowds below. I look out on the endless threads of asphalt and cars weaving through buildings and wonder what tonight’s hunt with Breena will bring.
“Want to go around again?” I ask as the platform and its endless queue of tourists draws closer.
Richard glances out the wide, curving glass. “We only paid for one round. It would be rather unkingly to steal a ride.”
“We’ll slip a little more money into the till on the way out,” I promise.
Genuine concern lurks behind the lines of his face. Something about it touches me. There’s a compassion in him that runs deep. It’s what made men like Alfred the Great worthy of the crown—what made them true kings.
“All right,” he says finally. “One more time.”
“Good. I’m not ready to leave yet.” I rest my head back against his chest, push away all thoughts of the hunt. Instead I let his confession linger in my mind. Three words, short but so vast, lifting me up and giving me new meaning.
For now, they are enough.