5
Y our predecessor has not been forthcoming. Milori’s words haunted her as she made her way back toward the palace. What, exactly, did he think she was supposed to know? More concerningly, what did he think Elvina had withheld from her?
It was surely treasonous to even entertain a thought like that. But then, Elvina had been preternaturally calm when that scout crashed into the council meeting, donning her role as easily as sliding on a new gown. If she’d already known about the monster, then…
No, no. Clarion could not allow herself to go down this road.
Taking information back to Elvina was tempting, yes, but to involve herself in some sort of—what, conspiracy? That was beyond her, and with her coronation looming, she could not afford to be distracted by the Warden of the Winter Woods and his cryptic words. For all she knew, he was lying to her. And yet, Clarion found it difficult to doubt the genuine concern—and guilt—she’d seen on his face.
She shoved the memory of his haunted expression aside. Sincere or not, she could not meet with him again.
In the distance, the Pixie Dust Tree shone out of the night like the glow of a lantern. But Clarion couldn’t bring herself to return home just yet. Milori had warned her that this creature, whatever it was, hunted in the darkness, but below her, Spring Valley slumbered peacefully: no chaos, no terror, and certainly no monsters. Surely it couldn’t hurt to check on Petra; it was on the way home, after all. She banked left, the wind guiding her along its steady course.
Tinker’s Nook lay nestled at the base of a massive sycamore, surrounded on all sides by sloping earth grown wild with tall grass and drowsing bluebells. Most tinkers built their houses atop the tree’s roots, each home crowned with a roof of maple leaves. Delicate stairways of northern tooth mushrooms sprouted from the bark and paved the way to their front doors. Tinkers’ creativity always amazed Clarion. Without them, little would get done in Pixie Hollow. Apart from repairing and building infrastructure, they invented all manner of things to make daily life easier.
Their handiwork—and the beginnings of autumn preparations—lay scattered in the center of the clearing: acorn cups filled with the leaf-talents’ dye, carefully arranged in a gradient from scarlet to gold; mushroom-cap workbenches scattered with tools; half-assembled carts made of hollowed avocado skins. A short distance away, Clarion spied their chestnut-shell wheels, waiting to be installed. The disarray gave the impression of a place abandoned in a great hurry. But candles and sunlight-powered lamps burned softly on the windowsills, and she could see the vague shapes of silhouettes moving within.
Clarion made her way toward Petra’s home, tucked away in a far-flung corner of the village. Unlike most of the other homes, hers was an intricate work of stacked river stones, mortared with mud and pixie dust and thatched with a thick layer of moss. By her own admission, Petra preferred a less “organic” look, but a single mushroom sprouted from the roof as if to spite her.
Clarion alighted on her porch. The door loomed above her, a delicate sliver of a felled tree that Petra had sanded and polished to a shine. She knocked. Immediately, a shriek came from within.
Clarion sighed. “It’s me.”
“Clarion?” The curtains parted, and Petra’s pale face appeared in the window. The door cracked open slowly to reveal her there, clutching a hammer in one hand and the cap of an acorn—a makeshift shield, Clarion presumed—in the other. “You scared me!”
Clarion couldn’t help smiling. “Are you so unused to visitors, or did you think a monster would knock so politely?”
As soon as the word monster passed her lips, Petra gasped. “What are you doing out there? It’s too dangerous to be outside.”
Before Clarion could reply, Petra seized her by the arm and all but dragged her inside in a flurry of wild red hair and scattered pixie dust. The house was completely, disconcertingly dark. She blinked hard, willing her eyes to adjust. “Perhaps some light would…?”
“Absolutely not. Your wings are so bright as it is,” Petra groused. “You’re going to lure it here if you haven’t already.”
Clarion scoffed. “That’s ridiculous.”
Petra gave her a meaningful look. “Have you forgotten the Bat Incident? I haven’t.”
Now, that was low. Once, many years ago, the two of them had snuck off to Autumn under the cover of nightfall, to sit beneath the stars with mugs of hot apple cider. It had taken her days to convince Petra it would be worth her while. What she had not accounted for was her glow disrupting the bats’ flight patterns on the way there. Even now, she could see the flash of dark wings—and hear her own laughter over Petra’s horrified scream.
“The scout said it looked like a fox,” Clarion said. “This time, you’re safe.”
Petra did not dignify that with a response. Instead, she pointedly drew the curtains. Clarion’s wings did indeed brighten the blackness of the room. Their glow traced the outline of all Petra’s things, and the pixie dust that drifted off them scattered across the floor, glittering like pieces of starlight. From what little she could make out in the gloom, it looked like Petra’s workbench had upended itself on the floor. Clearly, she was in the middle of a project. All other aspects of her life—from socializing to tidying—fell away when she fully immersed herself. It both surprised and disappointed Clarion to realize that she didn’t know what it was that had captured Petra’s attention this time.
Both of them really had been busy lately.
Apparently satisfied with her security measures, Petra slid down onto the floor and fixed Clarion with a bleary-eyed stare. “What are you doing here so late?”
“I wanted to check on you.”
Petra sighed fretfully as she began gathering up her hair into a messy knot atop her head. “Oh, well. It’s more of the same. Work has been—”
“To see if you’re safe,” Clarion cut in. “I was worried about you, holed up in here all alone.”
“Oh! Yes, as safe as I can be. I don’t mind an excuse to stay in here.” She studied Clarion almost suspiciously. “Is that really why you came? You look like you have a secret.”
“A secret?” Clarion laughed nervously. Did she? Going to the border wasn’t forbidden, exactly, but if anyone found out she’d met with the Warden of the Winter Woods…Well, in truth, she did not know what would happen. It was best not to mention it, partly because she would never be meeting with him again, and mostly because the very mention of a winter fairy anywhere near the warm seasons would shatter Petra’s fragile constitution. She already looked one scrap of bad news away from a nervous breakdown. Besides, Petra was terrible at keeping secrets. “No, of course not. What gave you that idea?”
“Oh, no.” Petra rested her forehead on her knees. When she spoke again, her voice was muffled. “It’s really bad, then, isn’t it?”
Clarion’s stomach dropped. Was she really so obvious that Petra had already figured her out?
Somehow, Petra slumped even further into the floor. She lifted her chin and gazed at Clarion with a look of pure despair. “Elvina really is going to banish me.”
Clarion blinked hard at her, caught somewhere between relief and confusion. “Um…no?”
“Worse? You’ve come to break the news that we’re not going to make it through the night? No, it’s—”
“Petra,” Clarion cut in, grabbing her shoulders. “You’re catastrophizing again.”
“Right. You’re right.” Petra deflated, then forced herself back upright. “So, what is it? The Queen of Pixie Hollow shows up at my door—”
“Queen-in-training,” Clarion interjected.
“—unannounced and with no business?”
How sweet it would be to talk through what had happened with her. Clarion sighed and perched on the edge of Petra’s table—in what little space there was left for her, anyway. Something jangled behind her, which she slid out of the way. Petra did not shout at her to be careful, so she supposed it was nothing important.
As Clarion studied her friend’s drawn, soot-streaked face, an ache bloomed deep in her chest. In moments like this, she could appreciate the true wisdom of Elvina’s philosophy. A queen had to carry the weight of her decisions alone. Keeping everyone at a distance made it far easier to resist the temptation to burden others. And so, she said, “I promise I have no ulterior motives, secrets, or terrible news.”
Petra did not look convinced. Absentmindedly, she picked up one of her tools and turned it in her fingers, staring intently down at it. “You don’t have to be mysterious, Clarion. Not with me.”
Don’t I? She gestured at the wreckage of Petra’s cottage and forced herself to smile. “I know. I’ve just missed you. Why don’t you tell me what all this is?”
“I haven’t told you yet?” Petra’s eyes lit up, and all the anxiety, all the uncertainty, melted off her. She rummaged through her things until she retrieved two flat sheets of metal. “This could be groundbreaking. I’ve been developing a new welding technique using sand and…”
Clarion let the rush of Petra’s enthusiasm wash over her. Even though she hardly understood a word of her speech, the sight of her in her element warmed Clarion like sunlight. And somewhere, deeper down, it stirred a spark of sadness.
What must it be like, she wondered, to be so certain of your path?
What must it be like to share it?
When she returned to the palace, the balcony doors latched too loudly behind her. Clarion held her breath, bracing herself, but after a few moments, nothing had happened. No alarms blared. No scouts kicked in her door.
A small relief, she thought. Somehow, she’d gotten away with her reconnaissance mission. She felt almost giddy with the rush of it.
She changed into a nightgown, then settled at her vanity to undo her braid. As she worked, freeing the flower petals and pins from her hair, some fanciful part of her believed she could still smell snow and pine resin. Winter, in some way, had followed her even here. She had just picked up her comb when three sharp knocks sounded on the door. Clarion winced. There was no mistaking that authoritative announcement, wordless as it was.
Elvina.
As composedly as she could, Clarion said, “Enter.”
When she turned, she saw Elvina framed by the doorway. Despite the late hour, she had not changed out of her regalia. Her expression was unreadable at first glance, but Clarion thought she detected a flash of relief in her eyes. “You’re here.”
“Where else would I be?” Clarion smiled radiantly at her, hoping it would distract from the hitch in her voice, and swiveled back toward the mirror. She retrieved her comb and set about smoothing out the waves in her hair.
In the reflection, Clarion watched Elvina’s expression darken. “You were unaccounted for when I checked on your earlier.”
Clarion had no answer for that. If only she’d devised some clever lie, some excuse…But it seemed unwise to contrive something now. “I’m sorry.”
Her voice sounded terribly small and pathetic, even to her own ears. Elvina heaved a long sigh. “I thought you had grown out of this impulse of yours. At the very least, I thought you had the good sense to stay out of such obvious danger. I ought to reassign your guard for the oversight.”
“It wasn’t her fault,” Clarion protested. Panic knifed through her. How could she have been so careless? She hadn’t considered how it might impact Artemis, whose entire job was ensuring that Clarion stayed out of harm’s way. “It was mine.”
Any warmth in Elvina’s expression vanished. “You disobeyed my direct orders.”
“And I apologize for that.” Clarion rose to her feet. In her unbound hair and loose nightgown, she felt entirely unequal to the task of challenging Elvina. But perhaps, now that she had her full attention, she could get through to her. “However, I cannot sit idle while our subjects put themselves at risk. The Queen of Pixie Hollow must—”
“I feared the worst!”
The rawness of Elvina’s voice silenced Clarion’s every coherent thought. It rang in the silence. Elvina’s breathing came unevenly, and it was only then that Clarion understood. Elvina was not just furious with her.
She was afraid.
“The scouts weren’t able to track the creature,” Elvina continued. “It left no trace, as if it just vanished. When I returned to the palace to find Artemis in a panic and you missing, what was I supposed to believe? If it had taken you…”
Then there would be no coronation, and Elvina would be free to rule for another thousand years—or until another star fell, one carrying a far more suitable heir. Clarion did not know what was worse: her self-pity or how wretched Elvina looked with her trembling hands.
“Where were you?” Elvina asked, voice low.
Your predecessor has not been forthcoming. Clarion shoved the memory of Milori’s words down as quickly as it arose. “I went to check on Petra. You know how she gets.”
It wasn’t a lie—not entirely.
“I do.” Elvina relented. The answer seemed to appease her, and moment by moment, she collected herself. “You are kind to that tinker. But do not disobey me again. Pixie Hollow cannot afford to have its heir going wherever she pleases and putting herself in needless danger. You are too valuable.”
Of course. Orders were not for her to question, nor for her to understand. Clarion wrapped her arms around herself. “Elvina?”
Elvina inclined her chin in acknowledgment.
If she wanted the answer to her question, she had to tread carefully. “That scout said the monster came from the Winter Woods. Will the winter fairies be all right?”
Elvina frowned, clearly surprised by this new line of questioning. “The Winter Woods is a dangerous, barren place crawling with monsters. They are used to it by now.”
Crawling with monsters. Clarion could not scrub from her mind Milori’s look of befuddlement when he’d said, You don’t know. Struggling to keep her tone neutral, she asked, “Did you know that before today?”
“Only vaguely,” Elvina replied guardedly. “There is a reason we haven’t attempted to make contact with Winter.”
“But it’s the Queen of Pixie Hollow’s job to keep her subjects safe.” Clarion dared to meet her mentor’s eyes. She found herself jittery and cold with the thrill of talking back. She did not think she liked it. “Isn’t it?”
“Her subjects , yes,” Elvina said, leveling a flat stare at her. “The winter fairies have managed themselves for centuries and have coexisted alongside those creatures for as long as I have been alive—and much, much longer, I’m certain. Besides, they answer to the Warden of the Winter Woods. The Warden has their own way of doing things, and I assure you that they would not appreciate our interference.”
Clarion wasn’t satisfied with that answer. How could she be, when the Warden of the Winter Woods himself had asked for her help? Elvina demanded she accept her decisions and explanations without question. Yesterday, she might have. But now, Clarion could not deny that maybe Milori was right.
Elvina was withholding something from her.
When Clarion made no reply, Elvina seemed relieved. Her rigid posture relaxed, and her tone softened. “Let us put this behind us. We will remain vigilant, but for now, it seems the danger has passed. Tomorrow, business will continue as usual, and you will be shadowing the Minister of Autumn. It will be good for you to see how he manages preparations for a seasonal turn.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
With a stiff nod, Elvina left the room.
As soon as the door latched behind her, Clarion collapsed into bed. In the dark, the ceiling swam with the golden light emanating from her wings. From her vantage point, she could see the vastness of the night sky through her window. And there, reaching toward the scattering of stars, was the frost-backed peak of the mountain, frozen and forlorn. This time, it felt less like the mountains watching her—and more like a winter fairy. If she closed her eyes, she could practically see it: Milori, his hair like a white flame in the wind, his eyes fixed on the Pixie Dust Tree.
I will be waiting here, at sunset, every night for a week.