6
T he next day, Clarion regretted staying up so late. By the time evening settled over the Autumn Forest, she was exhausted from a full day’s work alongside the Minister of Autumn—and shivering even in her cobweb shawl.
Rowan, who had excused himself a few minutes ago, returned now with a mug of dandelion-root tea. He handed it to her with a knowing sort of look. “You’ll get used to the long days eventually.”
“I hope I haven’t been dragging too much,” she said, equal parts embarrassed and grateful that he’d noticed. “Thank you.”
He beamed at her. “Not at all.”
Clarion took a sip of her tea. Although she never much cared for the dandelion’s bitterness, it made her feel that she somewhat belonged among the living. At the very least, it warmed her hands. The temperature here always landed perfectly on crisp , and the foliage blazed eternal in its red and orange glory. It made her long for things she had not enjoyed for quite some time: long evenings by a fire, or diving into an ocean of fallen leaves.
Rowan had recently begun preparations for the arrival of autumn, and despite her distraction, Clarion was determined to commit every detail to memory. This would be the first seasonal transition she oversaw as queen, and after how bitterly she’d disappointed Elvina last night, nothing could go awry. This would be her one opportunity to prove her mettle now that she had dissuaded herself from any further engagement with the Warden of the Winter Woods. Never mind that she had lain awake for far longer than she cared to admit, turning over his every word to her.
Now, Clarion directed all her formidable willpower to putting him far, far out of mind. It was admittedly difficult when Artemis lurked a few yards away, staring at Clarion as though she might vanish if Artemis looked away for even a moment. Clarion supposed she deserved her renewed attention—and the guilt that accompanied it. She had landed Artemis in trouble with her little disappearing act.
She hadn’t been to Autumn since the Revelry last year, where all the world glowed beneath the light of the full harvest moon. She still remembered the gleam of the autumn scepter refracting moonlight into blue pixie dust—how it had rained down on them, gathering in the trees and catching on her eyelashes like snowfall. She’d rarely seen Pixie Hollow so joyous. Most of all, she remembered standing beside Elvina, placid-faced and aching, as she watched everyone dancing and glittering far below them.
She’d hovered, as she did now, forever out of reach.
Clarion watched the autumn fairies work in the glade below. With Elvina’s decree to return to business as usual, it seemed impossible for Clarion to imagine there had been any danger at all. And yet, as the shadows beneath the trees deepened, she could not shake her misgivings.
Waning sunlight dripped through the canopy, patterning the earth in soft rose gold. A few fairies gathered around a leaf-talent dabbing pigment onto an oak leaf carted in from summer, nodding and murmuring approvingly at his technique. A fast-flying fairy whizzed past Clarion. She dragged a great gust of wind in her wake, sending Clarion’s hair fluttering—and a flock of monarch butterflies whirling off their course. The animal-talent shepherding them wailed in protest.
“Sorry!” the fast-flyer called without stopping.
“Three thousand miles!” the animal-talent shouted after her, shaking her crook. “They have to go three thousand miles!”
Clarion couldn’t help smiling. How wondrous to see her subjects, bickering and laughing and demonstrating their talents. Rowan, meanwhile, seemed entirely unfazed, as if this sort of ruckus was so commonplace as to be unremarkable. He stood with one hand tucked into the pocket of his cloak. In the other, he held a notebook, filled to bursting with his haphazard scrawl. He’d told her it was a checklist, but Clarion could not in good conscience call such disorder a checklist. Items had been scribbled out and tacked on with reckless abandon. His mind worked in leaps she could not follow.
“At this point in the cycle,” he said, as if he had been speaking for quite some time already, “we’re mainly testing new ideas and ensuring we have all the supplies we’ll need. Elvina typically trusts me to handle all the small details. But a few days before we leave for the Mainland, she pays us a visit to give our preparations a final review.”
“And how does she know what you’ve done is acceptable?”
His eyes twinkled at her. “Intuition.”
That was exactly the sort of unquantifiable answer that tormented her. No, she could not depend on something as untrustworthy and inconstant as her own intuition. These past few days, it had done nothing but cause her trouble. Surely he was teasing her. Elvina almost certainly had an elaborate system of criteria she’d devised to assess his work. Clarion made a mental note to trouble her for it when she returned to the palace.
Clearly sensing her distress, Rowan laughed. “And a little faith in her minister, of course. I’ve done this hundreds of times before, Clarion. You’re in good hands—or at least experienced ones.”
The reminder of his age did little to assuage her. It was only a bitter reminder of how far she had to go—and how she did not have the luxury of centuries to become competent. “Did it ever worry you?”
Surprise softened his face. “What?”
“I don’t know,” she said quietly. She found she could not say what she really meant. Did you ever doubt yourself? Instead, she swept a hand down at the glade below them, where a group of leaf-talents were folding and refolding dried leaves into complicated patterns—an effort to achieve the optimal crunch-when-stepped-upon texture. A very complicated process, Rowan had once assured her. “All of this. Everything depending on you. Everyone looking to you.”
His loose curls fluttered in the wind, and the shadows of his long eyelashes slanted across his cheekbones. As he considered her, frowning, Clarion could not unsee the stillness of an ancient forest that lived behind his eyes. “I’m sure it did, once upon a time. But it’s not in my nature. Autumn is all about reflection and slowing down. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned not to worry about things before they happen.”
“I see.” Was that the trick, then? Simply choosing not to worry? It was a truly foreign concept to her, considering her closest friend was Petra, who chose to worry about every possibility.
“You’re a governing-talent,” Rowan said. “I know it seems overwhelming in the abstract, but once you get into it, you’ll know what to do.”
Clarion drew her shawl tighter around herself. “Of course.”
His smile faded as he drank in her expression. “What brought all this on? Is Her Majesty giving you trouble?”
“We have had our disagreements lately,” she said as diplomatically as she could.
“Is that so?” He rested his chin appraisingly in the crook of his forefinger and thumb. “Ever since you were a brand-new arrival, you’ve tried to make yourself into the very image of her. The same posture. The same voice—you know the one. I can’t imagine she’s discouraged that.”
Clarion wanted to take it as a compliment, but something about his tone suggested he did not mean it as one. Less like a human mother and child, whom she’d heard tended to bear resemblance to one another, and more like a child and her doll. At the plain sympathy on his face— no, she thought, pity —she bristled. “She only wants to prepare me for the role.”
“Of course she does.” Rowan quickly backtracked. “And I only mean to say you are a credit to her. You have always been…shall we say, rebellious? Still, what disagreements could you possibly have?”
“She says I’ve gotten my priorities confused. It’s more natural to me to address what I see in front of me. An argument. Someone’s feelings.” An opportunity to investigate, she thought. She picked at an invisible loose thread on her shawl. “It distracts me from the bigger picture.”
“Ah.” There was something unreadable in his expression, as though he was trying to hold himself back from saying what was truly on his mind. “Perhaps what she meant to say is that you can’t blame yourself every time things go wrong. Try as you may, you can’t solve every issue in Pixie Hollow on your own.”
“I suppose not.”
He clapped her on the shoulder, an affectionate gesture that nearly knocked her off balance. “You have better instincts than you give yourself credit for.”
But I don’t. If only he knew. If only he knew just how inadequate she was beneath the facade. When it came down to the things that mattered—the decision-making, the composure, the raw power —she would never be Elvina’s equal. She offered him a wobbly smile. “I appreciate that. Truly.”
His expression grew serious. “Clarion. You know you don’t need to—”
The very air shivered, and all the world went deathly, unnaturally silent. Gooseflesh rippled down her arms. Dread gripped her spine in a vise. It felt like the skin-crawling moment before lightning struck, but the sky—dark as it was with encroaching night—was cloudless.
Rowan frowned. “Did you feel that?”
“I did,” she said, a little breathlessly.
Artemis appeared at her side in an instant, her fingers hovering above the quiver of arrows strapped to her hip. Rowan tucked his notebook into his pocket. The hem of his cloak snapped in the wind. In the glade below, everyone had frozen. No shadow of a hawk darkened the earth. No scream of a fox rent the silence. But there, at the tree line…
Something caught Clarion’s attention. Black fog—had fog ever been so thick?—spilled into the clearing, and shadows pooled on the earth. They began to seethe and thrash, as if struggling to take shape. Murmurs of alarm broke out from the glade below.
“What is that?” Clarion asked.
“I don’t know,” Artemis said apprehensively. She withdrew an arrow and nocked it in her bow. A formidable weapon against their natural enemies, certainly, but something told Clarion it’d be useless against whatever that was.
Threads of darkness swirled upward, weaving together as they rose. Clarion caught the glimmer of black scales, the flash of venom-bright eyes. A serpent, she realized after a moment—although not like any serpent she’d ever seen. It was solid, real , and yet its body seemed to be composed entirely of smoke, held together by what looked to be stitches of violet light. Its body looped around itself in coils, dripping and oozing from its seams; the exact shape of it changed from blink to blink, as though it could hardly remember what exactly it was meant to be. It sprouted a limb, then a wing, before reabsorbing them. She could scarcely hold it in her mind. Its long shadow fell like a blade over the autumn fairies.
Monster.
It hissed. That was all it took for Artemis to spring into action. She loosed her arrow. It soared through the air and into the beast’s open mouth. Although it skewered the back of its head, the serpent did not even flinch. All the color drained from Artemis’s face.
“Everyone, flee!” Rowan shouted.
That was when the screaming began.
As the fairies took flight, the serpent spat its venom. It was pitch black—and glinting with an oily, iridescent sheen. Every fairy it struck dropped from the sky and hit the earth with a sickening sound. They did not cry out; they only lay there, limp, as though they’d fallen asleep mid-flight. Rowan looked on in horror.
Clarion seized his elbow. “We have to do something.”
That, evidently, was enough to snap him out of his stupor. He rounded on her, his jaw set and his mouth pressed into a thin line. “Oh, no. I have to do something. You will return to the palace at once. It’s far too dangerous for you to be here.”
How many times would she be forced to stay back? Excluded from aiding in the protection of her people? “What good is a queen if she’s forbidden to do a single thing?”
“Better than a dead one,” Artemis snarled.
Clarion wavered. Considering only one governing-talent arrived every few hundred years, they were a precious commodity. No one knew what would happen if a queen died before her time. Would another be sent, or would Pixie Hollow be left to the wisdom of its ministers?
Artemis fumbled to withdraw a blade of bluegrass from her pocket. She brought it to her lips and blew. The shrill sound cut through the forest. The scouts’ alarm. After a few moments, Clarion heard the alarm picked up by another scout in the distance.
“Scouts will be here any minute,” said Artemis. “Come with me. It’s not worth your life.”
“You know she’s right,” Rowan said, more gently this time. “Go.”
“Fine,” Clarion choked out. “Just help them.”
“I’ll keep her safe, sir.” Artemis sounded as duty bound as ever, but Clarion did not miss the emotion shining in her eyes.
Regret, she thought. And longing.
He nodded, then turned his attention to the glade below. A few brave fast-flyers had stayed, trying to corral the beast away from their friends. They dodged and wove through its shadowy coils, pelting it with whatever they could get their hands on. This time, Rowan did not hesitate. He dove from the knoll, his wings snapping wide.
“Distract it,” he shouted. “I’ll move the wounded to safety.”
Clarion could not tear her eyes away from the handful of fast-flyers. They sliced through the air in wild streaks and flurries of pixie dust. With the beast distracted, Rowan landed and lifted one of the downed fairies into his arms. Just as he began carrying her toward the tree line, the monster rounded on him. Venom dripped from its bared fangs.
No. Clarion saw the moment he turned—and realized what was about to happen. Every second stretched into an eternity. On instinct, her hand shot out. As if she could reach him from this distance. As if she could do a thing. But fear had kindled a spark within her that tore through her like wildfire. She knew that feeling.
Magic.
She gasped as the golden light of her power flared at the center of her palm and launched itself at the beast. Her surprise had made her aim terrible, but the serpent reared back as if burned.
For a moment, Clarion could only stare down at her own hand in dumbstruck wonder. Magic still glimmered like stardust in her palm. It bathed her in its golden light and set Artemis’s wide-open eyes aglow. How had she…? No. Right now, it didn’t matter how she had done it—only that she could do it again. Scouts were on the way, but they wouldn’t be here in time. Besides, arrows had not done a thing against that monster.
But maybe magic would.
She had promised to be good. She had promised to be safe. But if it meant saving lives…“Please forgive me, Artemis.”
When Clarion took flight, she heard only the faint cry of “Your Highness! Wait!”
By the time she glided down, planting herself between the serpent and Rowan, it had reoriented itself. Where her magic had singed it, its flesh—if it could be called flesh at all—had begun sloughing off in gouts of black liquid.
Up close, it was even more horrifying than it had been at a distance. The nearness of it filled her skull with a droning buzz of fear. And then, it turned the full brunt of its gaze on her. Her mind went entirely blank. Her every muscle seized with some instinctual fear. She forced herself to lift her hands, but they were trembling. Her magic had never felt so far away. But now, of all times, she had to be perfect.
Control, she thought, through the rabbit scream of terror her thoughts had become. Focus.
Her magic sputtered weakly in her palm. The serpent poised itself to strike, its jaw hinging wide. In that moment, the stranglehold she’d exerted on her magic loosened. Two thoughts occurred to her at once. I am going to die. And, stronger yet: If you want to hurt them, you will have to go through me.
It was the second one that filled her, strangely, with serenity. Golden light poured from her. It flared brighter than the sun, cutting through the low-hanging mist in the clearing.
Then, something knocked Clarion to the ground.
She went sprawling, kicking up a cloud of dust in her wake. A heavy weight settled over her. When the spots cleared from her vision, Clarion was staring up at Artemis, her face streaked with dirt and wild with panic. She could hear nothing over the ringing in her ears and the sound of their ragged breathing. Motes of starlight still glimmered in the air when her vision cleared, drifting like snowflakes on the other side of the border.
But when she dared to lift herself onto one elbow, she saw nothing left of the serpent but a wisp of darkness, slithering frantically back into the shadow of the woods. Venom spattered the earth where Clarion had been standing just a moment before.
Artemis had saved her.
Her relief did not last long, however. Her gaze snagged on Rowan, lying very still amidst the scattered autumn leaves. They reminded her too much of blood.
“Minister!”
She scrabbled to her feet and flew to him. He did not stir at her approach, but his chest rose and fell. Alive. Clarion nearly wept with relief. She knelt at his side and shook him. His expression contorted—not with pain, exactly, but…fear? His eyes flickered behind their closed lids. It almost looked as though he was having a nightmare.
She shook him again, more frantically. “Wake up.”
He made no reply.
Clarion’s breaths came heavier. What was happening? Slowly, she stood and surveyed the wreckage around her. All of the fairies’ careful preparations were upended. Unconscious fairies lay in the clearing, a few letting out choked sobs as they slept. Panic rose within her. She fluttered to the next fairy beside Rowan and shook her. “Wake up.”
Nothing.
She fluttered to the next and the next and the next. None of them stirred.
Nothing, nothing, nothing.
“Wake up,” she whispered to herself. “Please, please. Wake up.”
By the time she attempted to rouse a sixth from her slumber, a hand landed heavily on her shoulder.
“Your Highness,” Artemis said softly. “Stop.”
At last, Clarion sank to her knees and buried her face in her hands. She breathed until she no longer felt close to tears. Never in her life had she felt so pathetic, so unqueenly . Never had she felt so disgusted with herself.
For the first time, Clarion fully understood why Elvina did not trust her. She understood the true depth of her failures. If she did not master her abilities before her coronation, one day, Pixie Hollow would fall to ruin.
And it would be entirely her fault.