Page 16 of Wings of Starlight

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 oncrisp, 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,farout 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?”