Page 10 of Wings of Starlight

“Come on, Your Highness,” Artemis said quietly. Now, there was no mistaking the pity in her voice. She all but steered Clarion out of the council chamber and back to her room. This time, Clarion felt too raw to protest.

Outside her bedroom window, controlled chaos had erupted in Pixie Hollow. Distantly, she could hear the sound of the horns echoing from the watchtowers high in the pines. Pixie dust streaked the sky as fairies flitted home and scouts soared above the canopy with their bows drawn and their eyes trained on the shadows. Clarion’s heart ached with worry. Her people were suffering. Petra was likely terrified out of her mind, and that pained her most of all.

You have to help at scale,Elvina had told her. But she couldn’t. Not while she was locked away in her bedroom—and certainly not while Elvina was barring her from duty.

The Queen of Pixie Hollow does not sit idle while there is still work to be done.

Clarion had never been perfect, she knew. But how could she ever be when Elvina’s mandates contradicted each other? She would have to choose one. And right now, with her coronation looming so close, she could not content herself with doing nothing at all.

It couldn’t hurt to look for the monster herself, could it?

If she came back with something useful, she would never be shut out again. And maybe—just maybe—she could convinceherselfthat the stars hadn’t made a horrible mistake. Surely, with all the scouts and Elvina occupied, no one would notice her missing. She’d just have to wait until nighttime, when Artemis was finally off duty, to make her escape.

As the hours wore on, the sun sank lower, staining the sky a wildfire red. Just before twilight descended, Clarion eased open her balcony doors. When she stepped outside, shadows settled heavily over her and prickled her skin with unease. A gust of wind set all the branches clattering, and buried somewhere beneath the sound, she would have sworn she heard the distant scream of a fox.

Somewhere out there, a monster lurked.

The thought had no sooner slithered through her mind than her gaze fell on the mountains. The near dark of dusk had transformed them into something stark and shadowed. For the first time, they leered back at her almost expectantly. Clarion could not tell if it thrilled or unsettled her more. Gathering her nerve, she took flight toward Spring Valley—to the border where Spring met Winter.

An eerie quiet had settled over Spring. No birdsong, no breeze shivering through the tall grass, no sound of laughter echoing through the trees. Never had Clarion seen Pixie Hollow quite like this. It felt almost desolate.

Darkness descended slowly, trickling down through the cherry blossom trees and onto the meadows. Far below her, she caught a glimpse of her glow reflected on a pond. Fading sunlight glittered on the water, but with no water-talents to carve ripples into it, the surface was disconcertingly glass-like in its stillness. One of the dewdrop mosaics Iris had mentioned lay unfinished on the shore, clearly abandoned once the scouts had sounded the alarms.

As she neared the border, the sound of rushing water reached Clarion. Gradually, the trees thinned as they shied away from a river’s muddy banks. With a flutter of her wings, Clarion descended and landed with a soft thud of her slippers in the grass. Blackberries and sweetbriar grew wild in the underbrush, and the delicate smell of evening primrose perfumed the air. As she approached the river dividing Spring from Winter, she felt oddly exposed, with no woods enfolding her and the glow of her wings undampened by a traveling cloak. She’d never been this close to the border before.

She’d never been thisalone.

A root of the Pixie Dust Tree twisted out of the earth and spanned the river’s breadth. Bridges like this one existed between each season in an unbroken ring: from Winter to Spring, Spring to Summer, Summer to Autumn, and Autumn to Winter. When Clarion first arrived, their existence had puzzled her. What use did fairies have for them, when so few of them walked anywhere at all? Now, she marveled at the powerful magic flowing through them.

The four seasons existed simultaneously in Pixie Hollow, thanks to the roots of the Pixie Dust Tree binding them together in one place. A thought—one she knew very well she should not entertain—bubbled up in her mind: If Winter and the warm seasons were truly meant to be apart, then why did this bridge exist at all?

A distant rustle of the trees snapped her from her thoughts. Unease worked its way down her spine in a shiver. The sound had come from the Winter Woods. When she turned her attention to it, she would have sworn she saw a flash of light disappear behind a row of stark white trees. The dark knotholes on their trunks stared back at her like unblinking eyes.

Perhaps she’d found what she’d come for, after all.

Steeling herself, Clarion stepped onto the bridge. Halfway across, the lush moss carpeting the bark gave way to a thick layer of snow. Icicles dripped off its sides, glinting wickedly in the glare of sunset. Clarion stopped just short of the frost lacing the very edge of Spring.

In the gloaming, everything across the river was painted in silver and charcoal. Flurries drifted lazily through the air, a cold mirror to the cherry blossoms floating down from Spring’s canopy. The snowfall seemed to her a veil separating their worlds. It felt moremagicalthan she’d anticipated, but she could not let down her guard—or forget why she had come here in the first place.

The shadows seemed darker in Winter, but her wings gave off enough light to see by. Pixie dust shed from them as she moved, the motes glowing like embers in the darkness. The snow blanketing the earth was undisturbed: no paw prints, no divots, nothing. The scout had said this monster resembled a fox. If it was large enough to be seen at a great distance, radiating some sinister aura, where could it have gone?

Suddenly, she felt very foolish indeed. She must have imagined that sound entirely. What had she been thinking, wandering off in search of a monster? At the time, the plan had seemed so obvious—sosensible. Now, she saw it for how ridiculous it was. The stress and the doubt of her impending coronation had muddled everything. The truly sensible thing to do would be to turn back now.

But then, where did that leave her? She could not bear the thought of returning to her empty bedroom, or worse, to a council chamber she’d been shut out of.

Besides, she washere, so near to a place that had called to her for years. It was so strangely tempting to reach out and catch a snowflake. Even this close to the border, the spring air still held its pleasant evening chill. How close would she have to get to feel the bite of true cold? Very tentatively, she brought her hand to the very edge of the border, letting it hover a bare inch away from the flurries. Finally, she felt the slightest sigh of winter against her skin. Steeling herself, she let her fingers slip through to the other side.

Bone-deep cold seized hold of her, sharp and sudden enough to make her gasp. It raised all the hairs on the backs of her arms. Clarion snatched her hand back and puffed warm breath into her cupped palms. Well, she certainly had no doubts now about her inability to cross. Even so, the sting left her somewhat exhilarated. She’d never felt anything quite like it.

Another flicker of movement caught her attention. This time, she could see it clearly: a faint silver glow glaring out of the darkness.No,she thought,an aura.The spectral light wreathed a shadow peeling off from the night itself. Clarion fluttered backward a few feet. This was it: the monster.

“Stay back!”

But as soon as the words left her mouth, the shadow came into focus. Clarion tried and failed to swallow her growing mortification. This was no monster.

It was a sparrow man.

He looked to be delicately shaped from snow, with his fair skin and bone-white hair. It fell to his shoulders, with half of it pulled back from his face to reveal the pointed tips of his ears. His wings shimmered like ice beneath the light of the fading sun. Against the stark backdrop of Winter, he was almost…ethereal.