All That Burns by Ryan Graudin Page A

collapses back over the room.
    “Stop,” Richard whispers, his words tangled with fear. “Please stop, Emrys.”
    I don’t know if I can. There’s too much inside me. Spinning, hissing. Wanting to lunge, to fight like I always do. I have to get out of here, before I say words I don’t mean. Before I hurt him.
    I walk to the door and leave Richard in the dark.

Six
    D uring my first few weeks as a mortal, when sleep was new and impossible, I walked to soothe my insomnia. At first I looped through Buckingham’s halls, but those became rote. Then I started walking the grounds, and later venturing into London’s streets.
    Tonight the city is especially barren, with the black cloak of Lights-down draped over its blocks. Streetlamps stand—useless pillars of metal and glass—over parked cars and unlit Underground signs. There’s no roar of the night train under my feet. No growl of traffic in the distance. It’s eerie how silent the city is.
    Usually these walks are a way to recharge; my soul thrives on solitude and starlight. But tonight is different. Perhaps it’s the quiet. Or the extra layers of dark. Every step I take feels strung and anxious, like a chase. I don’t know if I’m running from something or to it.
    I thought I could slip into a mortal life. That love was worth it all.
    But right now this feels like the farthest thing from the truth. Everything inside me is astir. Storm-cloud emotions rise in bits and pieces, like shattered branches caught in a gale.
    Weak.
    Powerless.
    A fire without flame.
    You’re not what you were before.
    I knew it wouldn’t be easy, giving up my magic. I just didn’t know it would be this hard.
    The windows I pass are lit with lantern glow, like jack-o’-lanterns queued up for All Hallows’ Eve. They gleam and grin, offering glimpses inside. A family plays a board game around an oil lamp. A couple drinks red wine at their dining room table, gazing at each other over candlelight.
    Normal, happy lives. Never knowing anything else. I envy them. Their flightless, dull, coffee-drinking existence. They don’t have to live with the ache of being grounded.
    I walk and walk. Feel every step.
    The Thames appears. Its waters whisper by. I try to imagine how Richard felt, staring, waiting for me to resurface.
    A thousand hells. That’s how he described it. I know how it feels. I felt the scorch the moment Mab’s blade broke through Richard’s belly and he died in my arms. The moment I was far more broken than I am now.
    Everything I’ve lost, I’ve lost for him.
    Richard is enough. He has to be.
    Something catches the corner of my eye. A glare too harsh for stars or flame, arching electric across the river. Dozens of lights strung over Westminster Bridge.
    It’s a parade: people marching with signs and electric torches. The night’s quiet is shredded by their voices. There’s a rhythm to them, punching like drumbeats.
    “Shut down Lights-down! Shut down Lights-down!”
    There can’t be more than two hundred of them, but their yells are loud, piercing. They rattle the asphalt at my feet. Every scream threads needle sharp through my bones.
    I stay still next to the dark lamppost. The crowd slides by like a funeral wake. Their signs stab the air.
    GIVE UP POWER , BECOME POWERLESS !
    DON ’ T DRAG US BACK INTO THE DARK AGES .
    GO BACK TO HELL , MONSTERS !
    Monsters.
    Before it had only been a quote in a newspaper. The feeling behind Elaine Forsythe’s glance. But here, in frontof the Palace of Westminster, it rages. So sharp, so real.
    Do you really think the mortals will let you into their world? That you can become one of them just by giving up some spells? Kieran’s questions rise up, color the night.
    I’ve hoped. I’ve believed in the golden age of Camelot—that what happened once can happen again. That human and Fae can exist together. That my past and my future don’t have to be at war.
    But Guinevere dreamed that same dream.
    I’m standing too close. I think