22
C larion felt hollow, as though someone had scraped the very marrow from her bones. The glimmer of starlight she usually sensed within her chest had gone as cold as ashes in a hearth.
Although exhaustion dragged her down, although her vision flickered black, she crawled toward Petra. When she at last made it, she let out a choked sob. Petra’s freckles seemed to disappear into the waxy pallor of her complexion. Her eyes roved behind closed lids, haunted by something Clarion could not see—something she could not save her from. Clarion could not bear it. She could not bear the weight of her failure any longer. She wanted to curl up in the snow beside her and surrender. She wanted to sleep for an age.
It would be so easy to sleep.
She did not know how long she knelt there before she heard the crunch of footsteps in the snow beside her. Clarion tipped her head toward the sound. Milori and Yarrow stood above her, wearing twinned looks of concern. She felt cold in a way not even the longest, most bitter night of Winter could manage. She felt it down to her very soul. It made her blood sluggish—and her thoughts even more so. Everything felt so unreal, she could not be certain if they were there at all.
“See Artemis first,” Clarion murmured. The words felt thick in her mouth; she could hardly force her lips to make the shape of them.
“The healers are seeing to her,” Milori replied softly.
“Good.” Her eyes fluttered shut. “It’s so cold.”
Distantly, she registered that Milori was speaking to Yarrow in low tones. She caught only fragments: “…too pale…do something…”
He was talking about her, she thought. Clarion forced herself to focus on Yarrow’s reply.
“I can’t do anything if there’s no wound to treat. The strain she’s put on herself…” The healer trailed off. “It’s bad, Milori. She’s entirely depleted. She needs to go back to the warm seasons immediately. Their healers will know what to do with her.”
Am I dying? she wondered. She felt so disconnected from her own body, the prospect hardly frightened her.
“Neither of her friends is in any condition to take her back,” Milori said. “I can get her to the edge of Spring.”
“And if you can’t find any warm fairies?” Yarrow demanded, her hands curling into fists at her sides. “Our scouts warned them of the attack. I can’t imagine anyone will be waiting at the border.”
His expression darkened. Clarion did not like the determined set of his jaw, the resigned squaring of his shoulders. An inchoate feeling of dread swirled through her, far worse than anything the Nightmares had inflicted on her. “Then I’ll do what I must.”
“Milori,” Yarrow said warningly.
“I understand the cost.”
“Do you really?”
Clarion caught a glimmer of the pain that lit Yarrow’s eyes—and how she offered no further protest when Milori knelt beside Clarion. He slid one arm underneath her and hoisted her up into his arms.
He beckoned over a scout-talent and whistled for Noctua. In an instant, the owl fluttered down from her perch. With the scout’s help, Milori hoisted Clarion onto Noctua’s back, then climbed on with her. The downy warmth of Noctua’s feathers comforted her.
As they took to the Winter skies, Clarion’s vision began to fade in and out. She could only faintly make out the planes of his face, gilded in moonlight, and his hair, a streak of snow white against the starlit sky. The storm had cleared, she thought hazily. He looked so beautiful—and so sad. Sensing her gaze on him, he glanced down at her. The worry creasing his brow broke her heart. More than anything, she wanted to take it away from him.
But in this moment, she was powerless.
She felt nothing but emptiness within her. A disconcerting numbness had taken over her entire body. If she let go, she thought she might drift away. It sounded so very tempting. Her eyelids were impossibly heavy. Through the snow matted in her eyelashes, she watched the stars dim. They were calling her name.
Clarion.
Or was that Milori?
“Clarion,” he said firmly. “Stay with me.”
She was so tired. But if Milori had asked her to stay…well, there was little in this world that she would deny him. Anything in her power to give was his. Her words were slurred when she said, “Talk to me.”
There was a moment of silence before he let out a breathless sound, as though he could not believe what he was about to say. “Did you know that I saw your star fall?”
At that, the tiniest spark of warmth kindled in her. Blearily, she smiled. “Really?”
“Really.”
She forced her eyes open at the tenderness in his voice. Haloed in celestial light, he seemed almost otherworldly. He gazed down at her with fierce desperation, equal parts adoring and pained. It made an ache bloom within her, an emotion she could not name bubbling to the surface of the murky pond of her thoughts.
“I didn’t know at the time that it was bringing us a new queen. I’d never seen a shooting star before; they fall so quickly. But I caught the exact moment it soared across the sky. I remember feeling so…” He trailed off, his voice softening. A bittersweet smile stole across his face. “I had not felt hope in a long time, but I felt it on that night. I even made a wish.”
A wish? One was not supposed to share their wishes, she knew. It tended to render them powerless. But surely, if it had been made upon her own star, she could keep it safe for him.
As if he sensed the turn of her thoughts, he answered. “I wished that there could be a different future for me in Pixie Hollow,” he said quietly. “One where I was not bound to the Nightmares. Where maybe our worlds were not so divided.”
A beautiful wish . When she allowed herself to envision it, her heart filled with longing. He threaded his fingers into hers and brushed his lips against her knuckles.
“There will be,” she whispered. “I promise.”
If it was the last thing she did, she would make his wish come true.
The stars overhead glittered brighter. Wonder filled Milori’s expression as their light danced on the snow fluttering around them. When his gaze found hers again, she could not remember how to draw breath. How beautiful, to see the exact moment he fell in love with her. Perhaps he had always loved her, on some level, ever since that night he allowed himself to hope again. But with darkness encroaching—with her mind floating somewhere beyond her—she could not convince herself she hadn’t imagined it.
Surely, she thought, something so lovely had to be a dream.
By the time her vision came into focus again, they had landed.
Clarion was curled on her side, still nestled safely in Noctua’s feathers. It took her only a moment to realize they’d stopped at the border of Winter and Spring—and that Milori was no longer beside her. With a jolt, she struggled to lift herself onto her elbow. But with her strength sapped, she collapsed once more. She could only groan weakly as the world tilted on its axis.
From this vantage point, she could see little but snowflakes gathering in her hair and twirling lazily before her. White moonlight glittering on the surface of the river. And there, along its banks, deep trails of footprints, layered over top of one another. Milori had been pacing, she thought—was still pacing. He trudged into view again, wearing an expression that verged on despondent.
What happened?
Clarion’s head ached with the effort of remembering. Here, with the cold making its home within her, the answer eluded her. Everything seemed so far away, as though she were observing herself from a great height.
“What are you doing?” Clarion managed to ask. Her own voice sounded garbled.
Milori startled, clearly shocked to find her awake. After a moment, his features settled into grim composure. “Nothing. Where are your healers?”
She furrowed her brow, struggling to concentrate. “Feverfew Fields.”
“Where is that?” Desperation clawed into his voice.
The answer clearly mattered to him. She could hang on to consciousness, just for a little longer. “The edge of Summer and Autumn.”
Milori drew in a steadying breath. “All right, then.”
At the resolve in his voice, it occurred to her—far too late—why he had asked. Memories flooded back. The swarm of Nightmares. A detonation of light. Milori, determined to return her to the warm seasons. A bolt of urgency cut through her delirium: He can’t.
If he crossed the border, he would break his wings.
There had to be some other way. If she could find the strength to walk, or even stay astride Noctua…But no, she could hardly twitch a finger. Even her trembling had stopped, as though her body had given up hope of ever getting warm again. Her only chance was her magic. Although she had never managed to teleport, Elvina had taught her the theory behind it. If she could manage it just once in her lifetime, it had to be now. She reached deep within herself and felt as though she scraped her nails against the bottom of a dry well. A soft gasp of pain escaped her. There was nothing left.
And so, there was no other option.
“Leave me,” she rasped.
As he drank her in, his panic slowly melted into agony. Both of them knew that in this state, she was far more likely to fall than to make it to the healers intact. “Your glow is almost entirely extinguished.”
She supposed it was, now that he mentioned it. Distantly, she noted her sallow skin; the night, without a glow to push it back, settling over her like a pall. Clarion felt no pain, but the look in his eyes gutted her: utterly helpless. It was as though he were dying along with her.
There was some argument she’d intended to make, but it was slipping away from her. It was too hard to force the words out. Too hard to cling to consciousness. As her eyes fell shut, he let out a strangled sound. With a flutter of his wings, he floated onto Noctua’s back and gathered her into his arms.
“Milori…stop.”
He did not answer her. He only took the reins in one hand and snapped them, urging Noctua into flight once more. He did not even flinch as they soared over the border. Passing into Spring felt like plunging into hot water. As it flooded over her, Clarion wanted to sob in both relief and horror. A winter fairy had no protection here.
“Please.” Her lips formed the word, but it came out as a bare wisp of sound.
Had he heard her at all?
With her head lolled against his shoulder, all she could see was his jaw set in determination and his steely gaze fixed straight ahead. His pale skin had already begun to flush. Sweat beaded at his temple. Leaned against him as she was, she could feel his heart racing.
The heat was too much for him.
“Your wings.” Her voice was thick with emotion. When had she begun crying? It had come on so suddenly.
“Clarion.” He said her name like a plea. “Weighed against your life, they are nothing to me. I would make that trade every time.”
Those words nearly broke her. Tears slipped freely down her cheeks, but she had no strength left to brush them away. She could hardly focus on him; the world swam, marbled by the rheum in her eyes. “Why?”
“Pixie Hollow needs you,” he said quietly. “As warden, I have a duty to defend Pixie Hollow. That means protecting you.”
If only she had the wherewithal to argue with him…She would rail against him with everything she had. How could his own safety mean so little to him? But she’d been reduced to a captive in her own body, forced to watch as he sacrificed himself for her. It was the worst kind of torture she could imagine.
“Be angry if you must,” he said, “but I can’t lose you.”
Miserably, she understood she would do the same.
What fools their hearts made of them.
Clarion knew the moment they crossed into Summer. Below them, it was a blur of lush greens and golden blooms. But its heat sighed over her skin as though welcoming her home. Water trickled down her neck as the snow tangled in her hair melted. Slowly, sensation returned to her extremities. She did not want it, not when it felt like a thousand needles piercing her once-numb skin. The warmth of the air, however, did nothing for the cold within her. Her chest was as dark and empty as the space between stars.
Milori’s breathing grew ragged, stirring the hairs curling around her face. This was, by far, the most dangerous place in Pixie Hollow for him. At night, at least, it was only muggy—nothing like the sweltering afternoons beneath the punishing sun.
The familiar scent of feverfew wafted up to her. When Clarion turned her bleary gaze outward, she saw every white petal drenched in moonlight. Never before had it looked so beautiful, or so horrible.
“There,” she said miserably.
When they alighted in the field, Milori slid off Noctua’s back and landed heavily, as though he could barely support his own weight. He approached the door to the healer-talents’ clinic with slow, staggering steps. Clarion could not look away from his wings. They were folded against his back, but they seemed to be…wilting.
No, she thought. Melting.
They dripped from the ends like icicles in the thaw of early spring. The very sight of it made her stomach roil with nauseous waves of guilt. She could not imagine the resolve it took to push through that kind of pain. He knocked, his fist falling weakly against the door.
Within moments, a healing-talent appeared on the threshold, backlit by the illumination filtering out from within. Clarion could not hear what they were saying from here, but she could imagine the general shape of their conversation. She watched the emotions tear through the healer as Milori spoke: confusion giving way to shock—and then to the grim calm born from urgency.
She nodded to him, then disappeared back into the clinic. The door, she left ajar. A messenger firefly crawled through the gap and set off toward the Pixie Dust Tree, its belly blinking with the emergency signal.
Milori returned to her. “I’m going to have to move you.”
With a soft grunt of effort, he lowered her from Noctua’s back. He scooped her into his arms and carried her into the clinic. His skin, usually so cold against hers, felt feverishly hot. Candles burned dimly, melted down to puddles of wax in their shallow dishes. The soothing smell of healing herbs—minty chickweed and acrid burdock root—perfumed the air. The only thing she could concentrate on was the rhythmic drip, drip, drip of his wings against the floorboards.
“Back here,” someone called to Milori.
Milori made his way haltingly through the clinic. In the near dark, Clarion couldn’t make out much, but she knew when they passed beneath the curtain of succulents. Their waxy leaves clattered together and brushed almost tenderly across her face. He took her to the room reserved for fairies in critical condition. It still did not feel quite real, even as he laid her in the cot. Her teeth chattered. Milori unfastened the brooch at his throat and laid his cloak over her. Thinking of her, even now.
“Go,” Clarion whispered. “Please.”
He looked stricken. “I can’t.” He knelt at her bedside. “Not yet.”
“ Please. Milori.” She fumbled for something, anything, to sway him, but she had nothing. She could barely make sense of the sounds that had come out of her mouth. Through her delirium, she could see the sheen of sweat on his face. She could hear the healers shouting at one another. Clarion registered only fleeting sensations. Cool water at her lips. Glimmers of pixie dust. The prick of a needle. And warmth, slowly, slowly returning. She did not know if it was minutes or hours or days that had passed when she heard a voice.
“Warden?”
Elvina, she thought. Her tone was guarded but held nowhere near the hostility she’d lobbed at him earlier this evening.
Clarion cracked open her eyes, just barely, to stare up at the candlelight thrown onto the ceiling. It wavered hypnotically as the flame danced atop the wick. How strange, to be shrouded in such complete darkness. Her wings were as transparent as darkened glass. Only the faintest motes of starlight glittered within them.
“I needed to know if she’ll be all right,” Milori replied, his voice hoarse.
Elvina made a sound, somewhere between admiration and disbelief. “You must leave now. Return to Winter before it’s too late.”
Neither of them spoke. For a moment, Clarion believed they had been nothing but figments her addled mind had conjured, now vanished.
But then, Elvina said, “Thank you.”
She did not need to clarify.
“She’d do the same for me,” Milori said.
Clarion scrabbled to cling to those words. But darkness crept in at the corners of her vision. The last thing she heard before she slipped under again was:
“She’s worth protecting.”