Ryan Graudin - All That Glows

The sickness hits even before I reach the outskirts of London. A slow-burning nausea descends on my gut and claws through the intestines of my human form. I kneel by the side of the road and wrap my arms around my stomach. The first wave is always the worst. It will pass. It always does.

A light breeze hits my face as the cars whip past in filed lines, like single-minded ants. None of them will stop, I know, because none of them know I’m here. None of them notice the young redheaded woman crouched on the edge of the asphalt. With the remains of an hours-old veiling spell, the mortals’ attention slips right off, like beads of water on fish scales.

Minutes pass and the agony of my nausea ebbs back into a dull ache. I straighten and continue down the road into London.

London. The city is different every time I step foot in it. Always, it is growing. More glass, more steel, more subways, more souls. Bricks stacking on bricks to house an empire of electric cables and grinding gears. My magic is weaker here. Some spells I can’t even form. It’s the same for all of us. Even the ill-willed spirits can’t draw upon their full powers in the metropolis. The oldest among us aren’t even able come close to the city; its machines and electricity unravel their stiff spirits.

So the Guard is made of younger Fae, the ones who can withstand the forces of technology. Yet there’s always that part of us that longs for the fresh earth: the minty shade of trees and grass, the aroma of rich, crumbling soil—better to us than wine. This is why, during our off hours, many of us haunt the grounds of Saint James’s Park.

It’s almost dawn by the time I reach the royals’ stretch of green. The city has already begun to stir amidst its blanket of violet fog. Black cabs roam up and down the streets and the distant thrum of the Underground resumes beneath my feet. A woman sits by the edge of a lake. She’s wearing tawny, high-laced boots, the same those well-pieced soldiers wore when they left for the Great War. There’s a pouch of crumbs in the lap of her cotton dress and purple-headed pigeons clustering at her feet.

I walk to her bench and finally sit, not bothering to hide my smile. “Good morning, Breena.”

The bird woman looks up, her wrinkled face drawn back with surprise. Crumbs pour down like a small avalanche as she jumps up. “Emrys! What are you doing here? I thought you were stationed in the Highlands.”

I accept the old woman’s embrace with open arms. “I was—but Queen Mab reassigned me.”

Breena draws back and brushes a stray silver hair from her face. “You look good!” Her eyebrows fly up. “That reminds me . . . you’re not supposed to see me like this!”

In an instant, a very different person stands before me. Like me, she looks young—sixteen or seventeen perhaps. Her figure is as slim as a birch trunk and her skin flawless. Her yellow hair sits in a short, curled bob, which she begins meticulously picking through.

“Don’t be vain. You can look however you want around me,” I tell her. Throughout the long years of our friendship, I’ve seen Breena in almost every form imaginable: women both youthful and withered, slinking animals, and soaring birds. But these days she’s fallen into the habit of the blonde girl, as I now never change my redheaded form.

She ignores my comment. “So you’re with the Guard now? Who’s your assignment?”

“Prince Richard.” The sickness stirs again, tightening around my stomach like a hangman’s noose. I fill my lungs with dewy air—as if breathing in the electric hues of morning will make me forget I’m in the epicenter of over two centuries worth of machinery.

Breena’s powder-blue eyes grow wide again. “Richard? Oh no . . . What did you do?”

“I might have managed to lose a Kelpie in a loch. Mab wasn’t too happy about it.” I laugh; a short, barking sound that echoes across the lake and sends a pair of swans flying. Their wings slice through the mist like shears through a curtain—showing the weeping willow on the opposite shore. And beyond that: Buckingham Palace. “Although I can’t say the incident was a complete accident. . . .”

My friend shoots me a knowing stare.

“What?” I defend myself. “I got bored shuffling the Kelpies around to the same pastures every day. I thought a change of scenery might be good for them.”

“So you took them to a loch and lost one? It’s a good thing you’re so talented or else Mab would have shipped you off to the Isle of Man instead. You always were one of her favorites.”

“Some might consider London an even worse punishment.” I shrug off my friend’s comment. It’s true that I’ve advanced ranks in Mab’s court much more quickly than others of my generation, but it isn’t something I enjoy emphasizing.

“She must be mad if she assigned you to the prince.” Breena sighs at the riotous pigeons that cover her feet, squabbling over the promise of crumbs. “There’s no more, you’ve eaten it all. Now, shoo!”

They fly away in swirling tempest of dust and feathers. I whip the cloud of dirt out of my face. “He can’t be that bad.”

“He’s a challenge. No one volunteers to guard him anymore. He takes too much energy. When’s your first shift?”

“Tonight.”

“Friday night? You’ll see.” Breena retrieves the leathery shell of her seed pouch and folds it over her fingers, like she’s binding a wound. “He’s just returned from his graduation at Eton. There’s bound to be some . . . celebrating .”

I roll my eyes. No prince could possibly be that bad, even if he is seventeen. No one, not even Henry VIII had pushed the Fae to abandon our oath to the crown. The last time I saw my least favorite monarch, he was covered in boils, grease dribbling down his chin as he tore into the leg of a goose. The ghosts of hiswives—disturbed, unrested souls—clustered around, haunting him in all of their vehemence. But still, he kept eating. He never stopped cramming his gullet with the flesh of beasts.

Perhaps our magic is getting even weaker than I thought.

“I think I can handle him,” I say in a voice even tarter than lemons. “I’ve guarded the royals before this, you know.”

The acid behind my tongue only grows, rises like a beast coming out of a long winter sleep. I can’t ignore it anymore. It’s too present. All over. The edges of my mouth grow heavy with spit as whatever’s inside my stomach begins its inevitable escape.

“The world’s changed,” Breena warns. “You haven’t been in the Guard for a long time. My guess is you’ve gone soft.”

My palm, flat as a board, presses into my lips. But it doesn’t matter. The sick rises and I bend double. Gravel digs sharp into my hands, coating them in a layer of soft, white dust. The sourness in my mouth gets worse—spills out. My knees shake and the bile sticks to my lips.