Read Online All That Burns by Ryan Graudin - Free Book Online Page A

wide the gap is between these two worlds.
    Richard—with the blood magic sleeping in his veins, with his fiery passion, eloquence, and ideas—is the perfect bridge between magic and mortal. The thread holding the kingdom’s future together. No one, not even Anabelle or Titania, could keep things from unraveling if he surrendered the throne.
    “The kingdom needs you,” I tell him.
    “None of this is worth it, Embers.” He tucks a stray hair behind my ear. “Not if it means losing you.”
    My eyes hold Richard’s, dig deep past the royal mask—one he’s worn ever since his father’s death. It fitsso well now that even members of Parliament have a hard time remembering he just turned eighteen. But here in the wavering candlelight he looks young. And tired.
    I’m not the only one who’s made sacrifices.
    So I offer up four words, small and whispered: “I’m here to stay.”
    “I’m glad to hear it,” he murmurs. His fingers keep threading through my hair, forging paths and shivers. “We need some time away, together. Let’s take a holiday after the coronation.”
    “Sounds perfect,” I tell him. “I’ll let Titania know she’ll be liaisonless for a few days.”
    “Make it a few weeks.” His fingers pause. “Why did Titania call you away? You were just at her court on Wednesday.”
    Part of me wants to tell him about the empty cell and Guinevere’s tragic insanity, how it’s poisoned my dreams. But Titania’s order rings clear and true in my head: Tell him nothing.
    As much as I dislike her orders, the Faery queen is right. I can’t unload all these extra worries onto Richard. Not when he’s already awake most nights, pacing halls and carving deeper shadows beneath his eyes.
    None of this makes me feel better about lying. “There was a problem with some of the second-stage battery prototypes. The shipment of battery shells wasn’t gutted out well enough before it was sent to court. Every Fae who tried to get near it was crippled with nausea. They summoned me to dispose of it.”
    “None of them started going mad, did they?”
    I shake my head. “Lights-down is giving them more strength to resist. It won’t be as easy for the older ones to unravel. They’re strong enough to work with metal now.”
    “Good.” The king sighs. “We don’t need another insane immortal running about. Especially now.”
    Truth lurches high in my gut. I think of the aura staining the walls of the Labyrinth: insane immortal, signed and sealed. I think of how the escapee is running about, probably starting a magical killing spree as we sit here.
    Tell him nothing.
    I push all of this back down, into the deepest corners of myself. Far from him. “We try to keep our crazy Fae quota to one per year. Preferably less.”
    Richard laughs: a warm, sunny sound. “Do you know how much I love you, Embers?”
    His touch slides along the angles of my cheeks, mycollarbone. The thrill of him—familiar, yet somehow always new—soaks into every pore. Becomes my light and center in this dark room.
    His fingers are knuckle-deep in my hair, and he pulls my face so close I can count each summer freckle still lurking on the bridge of his nose. The flames on the table soak into his eyes, smelt them like copper.
    His lips are warm like sunlight, soft like cashmere. They melt into me. The places his lips have been shimmer with cold. Richard’s breath scarves my neck and his kisses trail down, forging new paths all the way to my collarbone. My breaths quicken and my heart is a smithy hammer. Beating hard. Forging new, brilliant things.
    Want rises inside me, like the first surge of an unleashed spell. Swelling, aching, and strong. Sparkling within my chest. I grasp at the settee cushions, pull even closer to him.
    I rake my fingers through Richard’s hair. A sound rises from his throat: deep, guttural. I start fumbling with the zipper on the back of my shredded dress, just as he goes rigid.
    Richard scrambles away from me so fast I