Wings of Starlight

2

T he Pixie Dust Tree loomed in the distance, stately and lush with its cloudlike canopy. Tiered cascades of pixie dust—as golden and bright as starlight—poured from the heart of its highest branches and pooled in the apex of its trunk. Its limbs curled protectively around the Pixie Dust Well before veering off in elegant arches and whimsical curlicues. Clarion had always thought one looked like an upside-down heart, another like the tail of a curious cat. And just below the well, housed in a hollow of the tree’s ancient trunk, was the palace. Windows dotted the bark, each one lit from within.

Even from here, Clarion could make out the glow of the light she’d left on in her bedroom, softly emanating from the glass doors of her balcony. She’d counted on sneaking back in being the hardest part of this little venture, but she had not anticipated the added challenge of her own lateness. Really, she had been on such a good streak of punctuality. Elvina would be so disappointed to see it broken.

If only Clarion had managed to master teleportation, one of the most useful governing-talent abilities. Elvina always made it look so easy: dissolving into a swirl of glittering gold dust, then reappearing across the room. Clarion had once managed to make her left hand disappear before it snapped back into existence with a vengeance. Given her track record with magic, she’d been half convinced that it would vanish forever, or that it would wind up halfway across the room without the rest of her attached.

She landed in the tangle of branches just outside her balcony and dampened her glow. With any luck, no one would be searching for a flash of gold among the foliage…although she secretly delighted in imagining how her subjects would react to the ever-dignified Princess of Pixie Hollow breaking into her own quarters. Imagining Elvina’s reaction, however, was decidedly less amusing. Mercifully, she’d had the foresight to leave the balcony doors unlocked. She carefully eased them open, then slipped back into her room. As soon as she latched the doors behind her, muffled voices filtered in from the hallway. Clarion instantly recognized both Petra and Artemis.

“…feeling a little under the weather…” Petra’s voice, Clarion noted with pleasant surprise. It was practically fraying beneath the strain of lying.

Her oldest—well, her only —friend had always been terrible at this sort of thing. It didn’t help that even after all these years, Artemis—Clarion’s guard—always managed to fluster her. Clarion supposed she appreciated the effort, considering she hadn’t asked Petra to cover for her. She hadn’t even known to expect her today.

What fortunate timing.

Clarion crossed the room and paused in front of her vanity, which was cluttered with bottles of fragrances and cosmetics. A quick glance in the mirror confirmed that she had no pollen streaked across her nose or any stray petals tangled in her hair. She looked a little flushed from her flight, but that was nothing that couldn’t be explained away. Petra had said she felt ill, after all. Clarion was tempted to use the excuse to beg off her lesson, but there was no sense delaying the inevitable. She’d made little progress in her magic since Elvina began training her, and she did not anticipate a breakthrough before the next one.

A flicker in the corner of her eye caught her attention. The clouds had shifted, letting a wash of sunlight spill into the room. Beyond the glass of her balcony doors, she was greeted with the familiar sight of the mountains keeping their grim vigil over the Winter Woods. In the warmth of the golden hour, the snow cloaking them gleamed a brilliant white. No matter how many times she laid eyes on it, that cold, austere beauty never failed to stun her. As foolish as it was, Clarion yearned to see the mountains up close. She could almost picture standing atop their summit: the wind in her hair, the snow dancing around her, the beauty of Pixie Hollow seen from that great height. How wondrous it would be.

Elvina had discouraged any line of questioning about the Winter Woods, of course. Even so, Winter did not frighten her as much as she knew it should. From the warm, secluded safety of her bedroom, there was something so peaceful about it—and so terribly lonely.

Just like her.

No one from the warm seasons had visited the Winter Woods in hundreds of years—not since before Elvina was born, and who knew exactly how long that was? Governing-talent fairies lived long lives. Clarion had never understood Elvina’s lack of curiosity. There was a whole other realm they knew nothing about, filled with fairies no one had ever spoken to. Only the spring and autumn fairies had even seen winter fairies—and only at a distance as they crossed the Never Sea each turn of the season.

They’re as cold as their season, their reports had said, and hardly even look our way.

Clarion tried to envision them, bleak and monochrome against a slate-colored sky, but those spare details had never satisfied her. She burned with questions she might never have the answers to. What must it be like to live in such a harsh place? What kinds of problems did they have? And what was the Warden of the Winter Woods like?

Artemis’s voice sounded from the hall: “Out of the way, tinker.”

A strangled noise of protest—then, the doorknob jiggled menacingly against the lock.

“Princess Clarion,” Artemis called, “I’ve come to escort you to Her Majesty’s chambers.”

No avoiding it any longer, then. If she really set her mind to it—or believed Clarion was in genuine danger—Artemis was more than capable of removing her door from its hinges.

Clarion flung open the door, coming face to face with Artemis’s fist raised to knock. Petra, clearly in the middle of a valiant effort to thwart her, was scrabbling for a grip on her forearm. Artemis snapped to attention immediately. Petra smothered a yelp of surprise. A flush dusted the bridge of her pale, freckled nose.

Artemis and Petra never failed to strike her in contrast: Artemis, tall with broad shoulders; Petra, with bones as delicate as a hummingbird’s. Neither, however, had ever bothered to learn what to do with her hair. Artemis had shorn hers to her chin, and it framed her olive-complexioned face in jagged black strands, as though she’d taken a dull knife to it out of boredom or necessity. Petra boasted a shock of brilliant red curls. Most of the time, it was piled atop her head and pinned in place with whatever she had lying around her workshop. Today, she’d chosen a nail; the metal glinted softly in the light. A safety hazard, as far as Clarion was concerned.

“Your Highness,” Artemis said when she had recovered, “are you feeling well?”

Your Highness. As many times as Clarion had asked, Artemis never dropped her formality. The scout-talent had been Clarion’s shadow for as long as she could remember: trailing behind her or standing dutifully at her side on the occasions Clarion made public appearances. But in truth, Clarion knew shockingly little about her, other than her frightening competence and her insistence on punctuality. Neither of them was exactly in the habit of sharing her feelings with the other.

“Much better now, thank you.” Clarion caught a glimpse of Petra’s panicked expression over Artemis’s shoulder. She would almost certainly be late to her lesson now, but she could not just leave Petra to stew in whatever worst-case scenario she’d envisioned. Summoning her most queenly voice, she added, “Will you give me just a moment? I need to speak with Petra. Alone.”

Artemis—obviously thinking of the unspeakable horror of arriving even one minute late to an appointment—looked agonized. Nevertheless, she said, “Of course, Your Highness.”

She retreated down the hallway and folded her arms behind her back in parade rest. No doubt she’d be listening in, despite her studiously indifferent expression. All scout-talents were incorrigibly nosy, but Clarion supposed that was what made them good at their jobs.

Clarion ushered Petra into her bedroom and shut the door behind them. Immediately, Petra latched onto Clarion’s arm. In a shrill whisper, she demanded, “Where have you been? I stopped by to say hello, but you didn’t answer the door. Then, Artemis cornered me out there to ask if I’d seen you, and I had to make something up!”

“I’m sorry. And thank you. I got—”

Before she could get another word out, Petra slumped to the floor. Her gown, stitched together from green maple leaves, puddled around her. She let out a long groan and cradled her head in her hands. Clarion almost reminded her about the sharp object skewering her chignon but thought better of it. Clearly, she had bigger concerns at the moment.

“I don’t know how you can be alone with her every day,” said Petra. “She is so intense . Have you ever tried to get in her way when she’s set her mind on something?”

“As a matter of fact—”

“I covered for you as long as I possibly could,” Petra continued, “but once she reports what I’ve done to Elvina, my days here are numbered.”

“Thank you for covering for me,” Clarion managed to interject. “But I’m sure that’s not—”

“Maybe it’s not too late to escape.” Once Petra got going, there was not much that could stop her. Every word barreled out of her with increasing urgency. “I’ve heard some fairies make their living elsewhere, stowing away on pirate ships or—”

Clarion did not know where to begin disentangling that. Instead, she pretended to consider it. “Now, that’s an idea. I imagine they’d have a lot of work for a tinker on a ship.”

Petra gawped at her. “You’re trying to get rid of me!”

Clarion couldn’t keep herself from smiling. “Mending nets, repairing the hull, fixing the pots and pans…”

“All right,” Petra groused, but there was no venom to it. “I get it.”

Clarion laughed softly—but quickly sobered at the strangely bittersweet look on Petra’s face. Clarion understood perfectly. It had been a few weeks since they’d seen each other, and yet, it felt like no time had passed at all. Although they hadn’t been born of the same laugh, sometimes Clarion felt as though they were sisters. They’d always shared some innate understanding: neither of them was exactly what she seemed at first glance.

Few fairies took Petra seriously when all they bothered to notice were the fretful things she said. But Clarion had always loved to watch her mind whir like a fantastical machine. In fact, she considered catastrophizing one of Petra’s many charms, now that she knew how to snap her out of it. Beneath it all, she was brilliant and funny and loyal—the kind of fairy who never truly let her fears hold her back, no matter how powerful they were.

Oh, how she missed her, even when she was right here.

Years ago—before Elvina had barred Clarion from roaming freely, before their duties commandeered all their free time—the two of them had been inseparable. They’d sneak out—or perhaps more accurately, Clarion would drag Petra kicking and screaming from her workshop—to explore, with Artemis’s long-suffering presence just behind them. Now, Clarion had her training, and Petra had her work.

She specialized in intricate metalwork, but there was little she could not fix or make. Over the years, she’d fashioned everything from jewelry to utensils to sculptures—and dreamed bigger still. She had once spent an entire evening explaining her schematics for a prosthetic limb. Naturally, Elvina had taken a shine to both her art and her ingenuity and appointed her as the Crown’s personal tinker. Clarion still remembered how proud Petra had been—how her excitement had made her positively luminous. It filled Clarion up with the purest sort of joy she’d ever known. As much as Clarion longed for those carefree days they used to share, Petra deserved her success.

She deserved happiness.

Clarion offered Petra her hands. When she took them, Clarion pulled her off the floor and guided her back into the air. “I’ll see you as soon as I can.” After a moment, she added, “I’ll let you know if you need to flee for a life at sea.”

Petra moaned piteously. “Fine.”

Clarion opened her bedroom door. With one last beleaguered sigh, Petra flitted down the hallway. She paused for only a moment to shoot Artemis a lingering look. Artemis, for her part, remained perfectly impassive, but Clarion did not mistake the tension in her shoulders.

Honestly. One of these days, Clarion would orchestrate some sort of intervention. Ten years of pining was long enough.

“I’m ready,” she said.

Her bedroom doors opened into a vast chamber: a hollow that had formed in the trunk. Wooden walkways and staircases traced the perimeter, spiraling down to a level of solid heartwood. Beneath that was the living heart of the tree, where magic flowed through it like sap, up to the narrowest veins of its leaves and out to its farthest-flung roots.

Together, they made their way up the winding stairs toward Elvina’s quarters. The walls had been worn smooth with time and carved by countless carpentering-talents’ hands. Clarion always found something new to admire when she passed. Here and there, an image struck her: an ornate iris, the round eyes of an owl, the bend of the river that cut through Pixie Hollow. In places, the artwork was concealed by swatches of moss and flowering vines, but Clarion could still see pixie-dust-infused paint glittering underneath. No one ever scraped the foliage away; the Pixie Dust Tree, of course, should have a hand in its own styling.

They stopped in front of the massive set of doors that stood before Elvina’s chambers, each one engraved in breathtaking detail with a mirrored half of the Pixie Dust Tree. Artemis pushed them open for her, letting a blade of late-afternoon sunlight cut into the walkway. Drawing in a steadying breath, Clarion entered—and was met by the wall of portraits.

Paintings of all the queens that came before her stared back at her, all of them poised and powerful. With centuries between them, each one was done in a radically different style—but all of them had been wrought by a reverent hand. They filled her with a quiet awe. It seemed impossible that her portrait would ever hang beside theirs. When she was younger, she had searched them for any resemblance to her. Some shared her fair skin or hooded blue eyes, others her honey-brown hair. But all of them had the same wings: luminous and golden and shaped like a monarch butterfly’s. Now, she only worried that if she looked too closely, she would find disappointment in their faces.

Clarion tore her gaze away from the portraits. At the end of the row was Elvina, her silhouette slashed into the sunlit window. She wore a golden gown with wide, ruffled skirts; the fabric shimmered with the pixie dust woven into it. Golden motes trailed from the train of her gown and sparkled on the floor, swirling listlessly through the air. A crown—the one fashioned by Petra, Clarion noted—sat atop her head; it towered high above her, curling back in the shape of a goat’s horns. In it, she looked imposing, exactly as a governing-talent fairy should be.

“You’re late,” she said wearily. It was not an accusation as much as it was a statement. It had happened before. Both of them knew it would happen again.

Clarion did her best not to wilt at her dissatisfaction. “I’m sorry.”

Elvina turned to face her. Clarion couldn’t help noticing how tired the queen looked today. Streaks of gray threaded through her brown hair, and the brightness of her gown washed out the cool undertones of her white skin. Even so, her expression brooked no arguments or groveling. There was something unknowable in her green eyes, the remote and uncompromising look of a fairy who had lived a hundred lifetimes. Sometimes, it daunted Clarion, this glimpse of her future.

“For a good reason, I trust,” said Elvina.

“Oh, yes. A very good reason.” What that reason was , she did not know yet. But surely she could come up with some reasonable explanation if prompted.

Elvina made a dismissive sound, as though the particulars did not concern her. Clarion could hardly believe her luck. “Have you been practicing the techniques we discussed?”

Clarion nodded. She had been. Of course she had been. She could not say, however, that she’d made much progress in the last few months—a fact that endlessly dismayed her. From the moment a fairy first opened their eyes, they knew exactly what their talent was: their magical affinity, their calling in life, the thing that came to them as easily as breath. Talents, by most fairies’ accounts, gave everyone in Pixie Hollow purpose and joy. Clarion very much doubted her own would ever feel so effortless.

Elvina had told her that governing-talent magic was rooted in emotion—or rather, the absence of it. Only with perfect clarity of mind and complete focus could she find the freedom to manipulate the starlight burning bright within her. But as much as Clarion tried—whether through breathwork or exercise or sheer force of will—she could not empty herself of feeling. She could not shake that desperate hunger for connection.

“Good,” said Elvina. “Let me see.”

In an instant, Clarion’s hands went cold with nerves. No, she could not despair just yet. Perhaps this time, it would be different. She extended her hand. Deep within her chest, she felt that infinite wellspring of magic. If she applied enough pressure to it, if she held on with all her strength, she could bend it to her will.

Focus, she thought. Control it.

For a moment, a golden light bloomed in the center of her palm. It guttered like a candle in the breeze, but tentative hope kindled within her. She felt lightheaded from the effort, but with just a little more…

The light spluttered, then died. Clarion huffed out a breath, closing her fingers around the dying ember as if she could keep it. She tried not to let her disappointment show on her face.

Across the room, a bright light flared. When Clarion glanced up, Elvina was illuminated by her power. It balanced in her palm like a star in miniature, casting the planes of her face and all the room in stark relief. It gave off such brilliance and heat, Clarion had to resist the urge to raise her arm to shield herself.

Unlike light-talent fairies, governing-talent fairies did not need to manipulate a source of light. Born from fallen stars, they carried wells of starlight within themselves. Their magic could cut through absolute darkness—and most anything else in its path. It could be shaped into a shield to protect the queendom. More than anything, it was a symbol: something the citizens of Pixie Hollow could believe in.

Elvina clenched her fist, and the light extinguished. “Clarion.”

Here it comes. Clarion schooled her face into neutrality as she braced for her lecture.

“Your coronation is one month away.”

Clarion bowed her head. “It is.”

“You still have not mastered the most fundamental skill of our magic.”

“I haven’t,” she said, with the barest hitch in her voice.

The Queen of Pixie Hollow required a mastery of politics, organization, and leadership—but also the magic unique to governing-talent fairies. A magic that Clarion had been struggling to perfect since her training officially began. She could not teleport. She could not produce more than a flicker of light. Evidently, she could not even help a single bee without horrifying her subjects.

After a brittle moment, Elvina asked, “Where were you?”

What sense was there in hiding it? She sighed in defeat. “The Summer Glade.”

Elvina’s lips thinned. She did not need to speak for Clarion to feel the full weight of her disapproval. The look in her eyes said, It is long past time to set aside childish things. “Why did you not return here after your meeting?”

“I’d meant to come back on time, truly. But just as I was leaving, there was—” She cut herself off before she could get lost in details Elvina did not want or need. “I thought I would offer my assistance to an animal-talent.”

Elvina’s surprise was palpable. “That is not your business. I am certain that fairy had their affairs very well in hand.”

“But she thanked me,” Clarion protested. “Perhaps she needed—”

“I understand you feel constrained by our role. But you cannot help every fairy in need, and you certainly cannot befriend them all. A good queen must focus on the task at hand—and help at scale . This is a vast queendom.” Elvina floated to the window. Here in the highest branches of the Pixie Dust Tree, they could see half of Pixie Hollow stretched before them. “All of it is your responsibility. You understand what this means?”

“Of course I do.”

“You are young.” Elvina frowned. “You have not known conflict—not real conflict, one that threatens all of the people under your protection. You must be prepared. Until you have mastered the basics, you cannot attempt to solve problems that are far more complicated than they seem at first glance. I am entrusting all that I have to you.”

Her tone left room for something unspoken. There were so many things she could fill in. I will not see you squander it. I do not feel you can handle it.

“To be a good queen—”

“Is to be as cold and remote as the star from which you were born,” Clarion finished for her. It was the tenet that grounded Elvina’s philosophy of governance, one that had been impressed upon Clarion since the day she arrived.

Elvina leveled her with a flat stare. “I know it does not come easy to you. But that is the only way you can maintain impartiality—the only way you can make the calculations you need to rule fairly.”

But if that was truly the only way, why had she arrived like this ? When she first emerged from her star, a sense of purpose had smoldered within her. That certainty felt so far away now. Sometimes, she suspected she’d gotten worse at magic the closer her coronation loomed. Sometimes, deeper down, she worried that maybe any day, a new star would crash to the earth and a new heir would emerge, as perfect as Elvina herself. As perfect as Clarion failed to be.

“I understand,” she murmured.

Elvina’s stern countenance softened. “You are under a great deal of pressure. But it will come to you, Clarion.”

But when? The thought stung more sharply than she expected. “Thank you.”

“Go and get some rest,” said Elvina. “You’re set to run the council meeting tomorrow.”

She’d nearly forgotten. Weekly, the Seasonal Ministers met to discuss the state of affairs within each of their realms. Anything, from disputes to requests for resources, was brought before Elvina.

And starting tomorrow, Clarion supposed, before her .

Tomorrow, then. Starting tomorrow, she would try to act like the queen Pixie Hollow needed.