Ryan Graudin - All That Glows

I follow their subtle movements, leaving a trail of scattered dewdrops in the mossy, morning earth. Here, in the dark woods, it’s impossible not to think about Richard. Just a few nights ago we were walking this very path together to see Herne, to bargain for our lives.

I don’t realize where I am until it’s too late. The clearing seems larger than normal. The impression of the king’s body still scars its center. The trees have retreated from it.

I collapse to my knees, press my fingers into the chewed, rotting leaves. Birdsong, the hymn of nightingales, bursts into the glade. Their notes punch into the silence like a drum, trill and hopeful. What was once—what is—beautiful, only causes my fists and teeth to clench.

“Shut up!” I scream into the branches. All I want is silence. I want to drown in it.

“Yelling at birds, are we?”

I shudder at the voice behind me, but I don’t turn. The gloom of Herne’s presence is obvious enough.

“Why did you bring me here?”

The woodlord steps around into my sight, eyes burning fast into mine. “Bring you here? What are you talking about?”

“Your trees, they guided me to this place.” I look past the wild spirit’s gaze into the surrounding woods. The darkness beyond them gives way to the sun. The morning light is soft, casting pale greens and yellows through the tree branches.

“The ways of Dryads are strange.” Herne shrugs. “I have little to do with them. Are you ready to give me your magic?”

A sound apart from the birdsong emerges from the woods before I can reply. It’s the noise of dead branches breaking, snapping under the weight of unseen feet. Both Herne and I look up to the same edge of clearing. Duchess Titania stands under the arch of two young saplings. Her platinum hair is loose and luminous in the dawn’s growing gold. Her face is just as severe and composed as I remember, worlds beyond the dying Fae in the castle.

“You’re alive?” I manage in my shock. Like everyone else, I assumed that Titania’s disappearance meant her undoing. She’d only been waiting, deep in the wood’s embrace, until her sickness retreated.

“Yes, and it seems that I’m not the only one.” Titania glances back over her shoulder, waves to someone hidden in the trees. “We found him just a short while ago. He wandered into our camp, as if he was sleepwalking.”

I barely hear her words as a new face breaks out of the foliage. Everything I’ve grown to love is still there: the clean slant of his jaw, his almond eyes, the light laugh lines that will only deepen with age, his smile, clear and bright. But there’s something more now, something just beneath the skin that causes him to glow.

I sit still, stunned. The man I saw two nights ago, blue and caked with blood, could never become the one that stands here now.

“We thought the art of magic was lost to the mortals, that the crown was simply a carrier of the power and not a wielder. We were wrong.” Titania shakes her head. “Something woke it up in him.”

Richard finishes the distance between us in three strides. When he reaches me he falls to his knees, brings his eyes down to mine. Two strong, steady arms pull me into him. Our chests press together, breathing in unison, and all doubt vanishes. This is my Richard.

“You’re alive.” My words are made of laughter and a great, joyous gasp—they don’t feel like mine. “Greater Spirit. You’re alive!”

He hugs me tighter, gentle fingers tugging through my hair. His breath curls over my neck, taking in my scent. My skin rejoices under it.

“How?” I pull back and the sight of him is new all over again. New and glorious. “I saw you dying.”

“I don’t know.” He shakes his head. “I felt myself die. Or, I think I died. I don’t know. But then I woke up and I was wandering through the forest. They found me.”

I leave Richard’s eyes and reenter the glade. Herne stands with his arms crossed. Titania and her company stare at us—utterly beautiful sculptures—both surprised and unreadable.

“Something woke up the blood magic,” the duchess offers. “It healed him. There are traces of it all over him. And even some on you,” she adds, her eyebrow quirked.

The blood magic. Just what the ravens predicted. But what woke it? The kiss? We’d kissed before. What made that night so different?

“Tell me, has there ever been something between you two? A connection?” Titania looks between us, as if trying to read our short history together.

“The first time we met . . .” I pause. “There was something like electricity. I don’t know. It wasn’t magic necessarily.”

“It’s called a soul-tie. It’s rare, uncommon, but it does happen. Your souls tied together. It also meant your magics connected. When Richard gave himself up for you, your magic responded. It sparked his to life.”

I breathe in, the dawn air dewy and deep in my lungs. “So our—our connection saved him?”

“It takes true love to die for someone.” The older Fae stares at Richard. Admiration, bare but bright, gilds her face as she takes him in. “That love, that bond you both share, saved him.”

“What happened at the court?” I ask.

Titania’s expression hardens. “There was no warning. There were too many soul feeders, hundreds upon hundreds. A whole swarm of them. In the end though, it was Mab who trapped us. She lured us into the throne room. It was then I saw the sickness in her eyes. I ran, the other court members held the way long enough for me to escape. I knew of the gathering at Windsor—I was there when Mab received your letter. I knew I had to come warn you, before her army came.”

“This is all well and good, but I have yet to receive my payment,” Herne interrupts. In all of his sulking silence I’d forgotten he was there.

I turn to face our growling ally, pulling myself to my full height. “My magic is yours. I don’t want it anymore. I want to be with Richard, to be mortal.”

Slight, silvery gasps from the other Faeries fill the clearing. Titania’s expression goes sour then sharp, as if she wants very badly to say something. Richard is the only one smiling.

“So be it,” Herne says in his typical brusque fashion.

My eyes squeeze shut and my whole body grows rigid as I brace myself. I don’t know what to expect: pain, emptiness, or at least a little discomfort from the separation.

“Your Majesty, may I?”

Richard’s hand slips out of mine to be replaced by Herne’s rough gloves. My skin prickles like ant bites as he probes beneath it, seeking a good grasp on my magic. In the end, my power finds him. It flows toward Herne like a magnet. For a moment I feel like a ship off ballast, all heavy on one end. Then it leaves.

It isn’t what I thought it would be. Not a draining but a weight, shedding off of my chest. Weakness takes over. I feel cemented to the earth, a wizened old oak that’s lost the desire even to sway. I open my eyes, find Richard. He stands close; his smile gives me something to cling to. It fills the strange absence of my magic.

Herne pulls away, all suddenness and jerk. Not all of my magic is gone. I feel the last dregs of it stirring in me. I look up at the woodlord, eyes narrowed.