Ryan Graudin - All That Glows

Mab’s good arm swings up. Flaring, chalky skin torches my face, making my world white with anguish. For a moment, I wonder if death has finally struck, but then I feel the blood and tendons beneath my fingers.

My work isn’t done.

She screams, strikes me again. This blow is harder, filled with sinister magic. I land face-first into the moldy foliage. My vision is still blurry—a hazy, unfinished puzzle. I scramble through mud and leaves, sliding toward the closest tree.

Somewhere behind me, Mab growls against the pain. The earth wrinkles with sounds as she picks herself up and crawls toward me.

I wrap my arms around the tree, skin digging hard into its scaly bark. There’s no Dryad here to comfort me, only rough wood and emptiness. I try to think of Richard instead of the terror rising up, pure and paralyzing.

“How could you love him?” Mab rasps. She knows she’s winning or she wouldn’t have wasted her words.

I let go of the tree and turn. The queen stands, a mess of silver, white, and blood against my poor sight. She’s a fallen star in the wood’s womb-like dark. Alien bright.

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“Don’t patronize me.” Mab shuffles closer, her features sharpening beneath my gaze. Years of suppressed emotions mottle her face, rot her like the Green Women. “I’ve seen it all before. The loss of reason, the stupid sacrifice of magic, the heartache. Just like Guinevere and the others . . . Loving a mortal only brings suffering. Even if you did end up with His Highness and get everything you wanted, what did you think would happen? What’s your ending?”

My throat catches. Something about the forest behind Mab isn’t right. We aren’t alone.

“I can’t live without him,” I say, pushing through the thickness in my throat. Breena’s broken body lies in the edges of my clearing vision. The sight of it brings pain, searing and deep. Mab killed one of the only things that might have made me stay.

“Then you won’t live.” Mab’s high, hysterical voice plummets into icebound malice.

Something flashes in the darkness—not a spell, but Mab’s own pallid light reflected back on her. The long, narrow mirror of a blade comes down, bursts through the Faery queen’s stomach. Blood, bright and fresh, cracks like a spiderweb across her bodice. The queen gasps when it pulls out of her. Her spell, half spun, runs back through the sword.

Richard falls with a silence far more horrible than any scream. His hair blends into the ground’s mush of mud and decay, his mouth gaping wide from Mab’s caustic magic.

“No!” No! Not him. Not him.

I dive into the leaves next to Richard, press against his warmth. The blue of cold and shock creeps over his face; his lips lined with red that should be on the inside. But the spell didn’t tear all life away. There’s a flutter deep within him, fainter than the beat of a butterfly’s wing.

“Live!” I wrap an arm around his chest, trying to feel the extent of the damage.

He gasps at my word—a wretched sound, filled with pain. I can tell, just by this one noise, that I’m losing him.

“Just hold on, Richard. I’ll fix you!” I sit up and look around, frantic, for anything that might help. All I see is Mab, shuddering a few meters away. The sword has only damaged her, its wound already healing. It will take a strong spell to break a spirit as old as her, magic that’s beyond my strength.

“Embers.” Richard’s rasp brings me back. His eyelids flicker. He’s struggling to stay with me.

I push the hair out of his face. Raindrops mixed with his sweat slick down my palm. “You have to stay with me. I can’t lose you now.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” He tries to smile, but it’s too much. The curl of his lips withers, like it was never even there.

I lean even closer to him. Our lips touch. His are motionless. I press gently into them, grabbing desperately for any signs of life. His pulse quivers beneath paper-thin skin. Beat by beat, it’s slowing.

Then I taste the blood, sanguine and hot, reaching into me with a slow, salty burn. My lips, my mouth, everything is on fire. Magic. Magic that isn’t mine or Mab’s. An old force, rusty but powerful, now inside me.

I pull away from him, wiping my wrist against my lips. It comes away, smeared with a thin film of Richard’s blood. Mab got what she wanted. I tremble, let my hands fall. With all the crown’s magic before me, I can do nothing but cry.

Something moves. My heart jerks, certain that it’s one of Richard’s limbs calling me back to him. Instead my eyes lock onto Mab. Her stomach wound has healed enough for her to crawl across the forest floor. Inch by inch, she’s heading toward Richard. I arch over his body like a rabid animal. The queen sees the wildness in my stare and blinks.

“Give it up, Emrys. He’s gone. At least make his death worth something, let me take his blood. . . .” She reaches out, her hand gnarled and wanting.

Anger and something much more profound surges through me. Power that isn’t mine—Richard’s blood right—mixes with my magic. It shoots through my veins like a special fire, waiting to be lit for centuries.

“I won’t let you kill the others too.” I seize control of my shaky limbs and start composing the spell.

Mab sees the curse weaving together, piece by piece. She sees her own doom rising before her.

“Think of all the years I loved and protected you,” she grovels, eyes desperate with horror. They’re clear now, blue as Breena’s were. “I was the one who taught you, who made you what you are.”

I say nothing, all of my attention trapped inside this spell. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever created before, with a hundred more intricacies than the one that destroyed the Banshee. I knit it together, looping all of the stitches into place.

“Those days are clearly over,” I say, all emotion drained out of my voice. Finally the spell is ready. I hold it between two palms—a horrible, beautiful thing, flames glinting with the transience of opals.

“Mercy . . .” The word comes out in a pitiful whimper.

“Sometimes justice is mercy.”

I look straight into her stare and let the spell fall. It peels at the Faery queen, like a knife paring an apple down to its core. I refuse to look away, even when the strips of flesh fall from her bones. Her eyes stay on me, phasing through every color, constant in their hatred and pain. I stare back until they’re gone, swept away with everything else. Nothing is left. Not even dust.

The curse’s light dies, plunging the clearing into darkness. I bend close to the ground feeling for Richard’s arm. My fingers find his. They’re strangely cool, unwelcoming. He’s beyond my magic now.

I find his side and fit myself against it. There’s no light heaving of his chest, no warmth or softness to press against. I lay there, staring past shadows and raindrops into the space beyond. Death is overwhelming in this clearing. It pins me down against the leaves, holds me hostage. With all my heart I want to join it, but I can’t even find the strength to move.