Ryan Graudin - All That Glows

The Green Woman shrieks with frustration as she pulls away from me. Dark blood coats her teeth and stains her lips. Her feral eyes wheel to where the prince is slouched over the toilet. There’s intense, desperate hunger behind her gaze. She’d do anything to have him.

“He’s under Queen Mab’s protection,” I tell her, once more positioning myself between the pair.

“And what are you going to do to stop me, little woodling?” the Green Woman rasps. Her eyes focus past my wounded shoulder.

I ignore her name-calling and invoke the old magic: “Blodes geweald.”

The familiar rush of power surges through my veins, seizes my body till I feel only barely in control. Every piece of me buzzes with the pure energy of it. The Green Woman jumps forward again and I hold out my hands. When the edges of my fingers brush her dead skin, a massive shock rattles through me. The world grows white with savage magic. It throws the Green Woman back with such force that the stall door crumples around her body. I watch the wreckage. Nothing moves. Small wisps of smoke rise from the Green Woman’s body, but I know she’s not dead. It takes more than a little flash of light to unmake them.

“Stay away from the prince,” I warn the crisp, blackened body, “or it’ll be worse next time.”

There’s a long, low hiss and the room fills with black smoke. She’s gone.

A sharp cough draws my attention back into the stall. The prince is trying to stand, bracing himself with unsteady hands.

“Who—who are you? W-what the hell just happened?” The alcohol has messed with his balance. He slips and falls back against the toilet.

I sigh and walk through the clearing smoke to where the door lies. The Green Woman’s outline is clear in the wrinkled metal. At my touch it smoothes back to its original casting. I direct the door back through the air to the frame, where it comes to rest on its hinges.

“I’m Emrys, your Frithemaeg. Your Faery guardian,” I say, and turn to face him again.

He stares at me, his mouth gaping. When I kneel down close, he stays perfectly still. Our eyes meet, this time for real. My body hums with the same strange current that caught me on my first sight of him. Half of me expects it. I push past the feeling, forcing myself to focus on erasing Richard’s memory.

“Bloody hell!” the prince exclaims, and breaks our eye connection to stare at his hands. They’re soft, unworked. Only the fingertips are calloused, relics of practiced guitar chords. “Did you feel that?”

I fall still, uncertain of what to do next. Richard felt it too? What was it? I check the air for traces of a spell, but there’s none outside of the banishing magic I used on the Green Woman.

The squeal of the restroom door breaks my concentration. Another mortal is here, in the room. I should get rid of him before he witnesses any magic. He’ll have less of a headache if I use a banishment spell instead of a memory wipe.

This man is even drunker than the prince. That much is obvious as he swaggers across the dark tile floor. His eyes are oddly detached as they fall on me, on my body. A sick grin plasters his face.

“Well, well. What do we have here?” He lurches forward. The movement highlights just how arched and beaky his nose is. Like some bird of prey. “A pretty girl, all by herself in the loo. That’s l-lucky.”

Disgust overwhelms me. If I were mortal, truly powerless, there’s no telling what this man might do to me. He moves forward with awkward, wide steps—like a puppet being strung by a five-year-old. He’s less than an arm’s length away when he reaches out, his fingers twitching and eager.

The magic isn’t even on my lips when the man falls to the ground. I blink. Richard is by my side, standing over the howling drunk as he writhes on the floor clutching his face and his awful, running nose.

“Don’t touch her.” His words are deep, forceful. The slur of his drinks has vanished in the adrenaline of the moment.

Hands fall from the drunk’s face, revealing a nasty, crimson split above his lip. It melds perfectly with the blood from his nostrils. He snarls and tries to get up again. Tries to grab for me.

Richard’s fist descends on its target with sobering precision. This time the man doesn’t move. He’s a loose marionette, all angles, out cold on the tile.

“Are you okay?” Richard asks as he shakes out his fist, wincing.

The prince came to my rescue. He protected me. This is so shocking, so unprecedented, that I can’t think of anything to say.

I can’t let him remember what happened.

“Forgiete.” I face him, murmur my enchantment in the old tongue.

The magic is gentler this time. His face grows blank as the spell takes him, wiping away the past few minutes. I guide him toward the door before his senses clear up enough to see his passed-out victim. Dazed and disoriented, Richard wanders through the crowd back to the bar top.

Breena is there, lounging on a bar stool. I grab the empty seat next to her and try to ignore the sickness that’s once again worming its way through my stomach.

“The other one?” I search the dance floor for a glimpse of the pale green dress.

“She’s gone,” Breena assures me. “Nice work in there. I see you haven’t lost your touch. Need another sparkling water?”

I’m about to answer when there’s a commotion at the other end of the bar, where Richard is sitting. I look down to find him pointing at me. For a moment, I doubt my spell’s effectiveness.

“Get that pretty redhead a drink on me!” he shouts at the bartender, and slings his arm over an ecstatic, big-breasted blonde.

I start to breathe again. He’s forgotten all about the Green Woman. And that moment between us. Whatever it was.

The prince’s Monday morning starts early. An anxious rap on his bedroom door from one of the butlers wakes him only an hour after sunrise.

“Your Highness?” the staff calls through the crack in the door. “Your father’s here. He wishes to speak with you in the dining room.”

Richard’s curses get caught up in the goose down of his pillow. To my amazement, he manages to twist out of bed and change into a freshly pressed shirt. The only evidence of his eventful weekend are fly-aways in his tawny hair and swollen knuckles. My own head still swims, hungover from the electrical buzz of subwoofers.

“Yes, thank you. I’ll be there in a moment,” Richard says to the door. He’s thrown on his royal demeanor like a well-worn dinner jacket.

His father is in the dining room, just as the butler promised. Even surrounded by gold mirrors and turquoise walls, the king manages to stand out. He sits at the head of the table, owning the seven chair lengths of mahogany stretched in front of him. There’s no food, only a steaming cup by his interlaced hands. I glance over at the king’s guardian. She looks disinterested with Prince Richard’s arrival and barely acknowledges mine with a nod. I have a feeling she’s witnessed this scene before.

King Edward in his anger is an intimidating sight. The dead weight of his stare disrobes me, the invisible witness. Richard, however, seems unaffected. He stands at the side of the table with his arms behind his back and his jaw set.