Ryan Graudin - All That Glows

“But we aren’t just anyone else,” the princess insists. “We have responsibilities.”

Richard breaks in. “Who made you such a guiding light anyway? You don’t have to pretend to be Mum. She does her own job well enough.”

“I—I’m just trying to help,” Anabelle says, the hurt clear in her earth-shaded eyes.

“I don’t need your help right now, Belle. I need to be alone. I have to work this out myself.” The prince rakes his hands through his hair and tugs at the back of his neck. As if the motions will rid him of his sister’s words. “Go. Please.”

“Fine,” she says, all terseness. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you. Things have to change soon, Richard. You can’t keep doing this to Dad and Mum.”

Richard stares at the gravel. His eyes stay locked on the small, sharp rocks. When his sister is completely out of sight he kicks at the path, sending a rattling spray of stones into the opposite flower bed. They rain on innocent petals, fast and spitting, like shrapnel.

“What’s wrong with me?” He looks down at his knuckles, at the hand he bruised protecting me. The edges of his dark lashes glisten, brimming with too much emotion.

I should be sitting by the flower bed, dodging those pebbles. I should just accept my blame in this and move on. I should wait for the next Fae to relieve my shift, so I can go ride the Underground and clear my head.

Instead I touch him.

It’s nothing significant, just the barest trace of my finger on his shoulder. The act is so sudden, so impulsive and not me, that I don’t realize what I’ve done until the prince reacts. He jerks back like a man burned, eyes darting faster than a spooked horse until they focus on where I’m sitting.

“Who—who are you?” he asks, his stare vague. “How’d you get in here?”

He sees me. It’s not possible. The veiling spell . . . somehow, my magic has failed.

I’m like a hare, frozen by the headlamps of an approaching vehicle. My mind dashes in hundreds of directions, but I can’t seem to make myself actually move.

“Where did you come from?” Richard’s eyebrows dive together. His thoughts are churning, playing out on every corner of his face, trying their best to reconcile my sudden appearance.

I should wipe his memory, cause another blackout. The spell is simple; one I’ve formed thousands of times. It should be little more than a reflex to take the past minute out of his head.

But I can’t make myself say the word.

“I—I have to go,” I mutter as I stand.

“What? Wait!” The prince reaches out his hand. His fingers brush mine—warm, tingling.

I turn and run.

High Street Kensington station swarms with humanity. Women whose arms are loaded with shopping bags, hooded teenagers talking into their mobiles, and men with briefcases all rush past. They’re unaware of the world around them, focused on getting home.

I get on the first train that rushes to the platform. The car is nearly full—I fight to wedge myself through the steel doors. More than a few times I feel like gagging. The train is all metal, sweat, and body heat, grinding wheels on a track. . . . Everything the magic inside me hates. Writhes against.

But the train is underground, a grace that is more than saving. The countless meters of earth above and around us feed my spirit. It doesn’t matter that I’m sitting in a metal tube, barreling through the tunnels. As long as I’m here, my magic will replenish.

I don’t remember which Fae first thought to ride the trains. More than likely it was one of the younglings—the ones whose stomachs were closer to steel themselves. The ones who weren’t horrified when engineers started carving out tunnels of our precious earth for the trains to burrow through. We all use it now.

The train is far from central London by the time I finally get a seat. I pay little attention to the names of each stop as we plow farther into the city’s outskirts. I let my head rest against the rattling window. Wind through the cracks and the lullaby hush of the tracks help calm my stomach.

But the thought, the full weight of what I’ve just done, still makes me want to wretch.

I revealed myself to a mortal—to Britain’s prince—and instead of wiping his memory, I ran. I broke the barrier between magic and mortal. And I didn’t fix it.

Richard isn’t what I’d expected. Not at all. I went into my first shift ready to wrangle an uncontrollable party animal. Instead I found a young man who, despite his better judgment, was brave enough to defend me. Someone who wasn’t afraid of me or the power I displayed.

Something about Richard is different from the others I’ve guarded. Something connects us: something dangerous and electric.

And I don’t know why.

Urgent needles dig into the back of my neck, and all of these baffling thoughts flee my mind’s center stage. The aura is both unsettling and hard to find. The train car is still crammed tight with bodies, wedged side by side in their seats or clutching the bright blue hand poles. All of the mortals are swallowed in their own little electronic worlds: music players, screens with words and moving pictures, conversations with people who are miles away. Not one of them sees the huntress.

Like me, the Green Woman is very visible—we have to be in such cramped, crowded places or we’d be stampeded. She creeps as slowly as she can down the train’s wobbling aisle. Her dress clings to her like emerald plastic wrap, flaunting a bursting bosom and sculpted thighs. Those lips are quirked into a permanent coy grin as she goes down the line, eyeing men like baskets of fish and chips.

She’s hungry. She has to be if she’s being so obvious about her prowl: during daylight hours, in a crowded area, alone. Her aura is weaker than most, which explains why it took me so long to notice her presence. It also explains why none of the men are looking up. Her powers of persuasion are as watered-down as her magic.

Looking at the way she skirts down the car, so desperate for more power, so starving, I almost feel sorry for her. But she chose this life. She chose to prey on mortals just as I chose to protect them.

The lurch in my stomach reminds me that I’m not much better off.

The Green Woman is so focused on catching someone, anyone’s attention, that she almost passes me by. Her smile, false as it is, can’t stand my presence. Up close it’s easier to tell that she hasn’t killed in a very long time. There are cracks in the magic of her face, patches where her beauty isn’t so dazzling.

“Sister,” she says after we first lock eyes.

The way this word leaves her makes me wonder if I know this spirit, if our paths have crossed before. Long ago, in the days before King Arthur’s alliance, the Green Women, Banshees, Black Dogs, and all of the other soul feeders weren’t so different from us Frithemaeg. In the beginning of things, we’re all the same substance: pure spirit, power drawn up from the earth. It’s only when our lives become physical—when bodies are selected, choices made, and oaths sworn—that we diverge.

I look at this huntress, long and hard. Behind the hollow sheen of her eyes, I see the lives of all the men she’s devoured. All the souls she’s fed on to make her own stronger.