Page 84 of Wings of Starlight

No, she could still do something. She could still save them. Hadn’t she come here to save them? Panic obliterated all sense as she fled to the base of the Pixie Dust Tree. Fairies lay scattered across the roots, still as corpses beneath the Nightmares’ spell. Some of them had begun to sink into the rotting earth. And there, against the stain of black rot, was the spill of Petra’s red hair.

“Petra!”

The earth bubbled like bog water, dragging her down into the depths. Clarion plunged her hands in, gagging on the stench, and dragged her out.

“Petra,” she said pleadingly. “Please, wake up. I’m sorry.”

Petra’s eyes cracked open. Clarion let out a strangled sob. If nothing else, then there was some good in this world. Some small mercy.

“You,” Petra said, full of venom. She sat up slowly, staring unblinkingly at Clarion. “You did this to me. You refused to listen to me when it mattered the most. You are soselfish.”

Clarion scrambled backward—directly into someone else’s shins. She craned her neck and found herself staring directly into Elvina’s dispassionate face.

“You are an utter disappointment,” said Elvina with a curl of her lip. “Why did the stars sendyou?”

“I don’t know,” she whispered, curling in on herself. “I don’t know.”

She wished they hadn’t. The weight of the crown had always been too much to bear. How had she ever thought she could shoulder it all? Being born a governing-talent was a mistake. No matter what she did, it would never get any better. It was always destined to end up this way.

Pixie Hollow, ruined. Her, alone and reviled.

Darkness flowed off the river, encircling her like fog. What was the point in fighting back?

“Clarion!”

She knew that voice, but from where? She dared to lift her head, but it felt so heavy—and her eyelids even more so. All she saw were the cruel faces of those who loved her best and hated her most bitterly. At least they were vanishing slowly, as this darkness closed in around her. If she let herself, she could drift off to sleep forever.

“Clarion.” The voice sounded far more strained than it had before, edged now with a hint of desperation. “It isn’t real. You have to wake up.”

Milori.What was he doing here?

He couldn’t be here in the warm seasons. And yet, hadn’t she seen him only moments ago…?

No, she realized. She wasn’t in the warm seasons at all. She was beneath the ice, deep in the Winter Woods. The fog had enshrouded her entirely, so choking, she could barely draw breath. If she focused, she could see the violet light of the Nightmares’ magic threaded through her surroundings.An illusion.Like all those fairies trapped in their slumber, she’d been cast into the Nightmares’ realm.

She bit down on the inside of her lip, hard enough that the pain startled her awake. The horrible nightmare version of Pixie Hollow fell away, revealing nothing but the swallowing darkness beneath the lake once more.

Clarion fought through the malaise and harnessed her power. Starlight poured from her in beams, and the darkness binding her fell away, like fabric sliced to ribbons. She fell to her knees, landing hard on the invisible, glass-like water beneath her. Her teeth rattled together. But with the light of the magic reflecting off the ice overhead, she realized now what had taken hold of her: a sickly purple smoke, curling upward from a massive creature’s nostrils. She let out a shaky breath and scrabbled backward to get some distance.

A guttural hiss cut through the silence. Two reptilian eyes blinked open—and locked on to her with a vengeance. She saw now what had been lurking in the deepest recesses of the prison.

The Queen Nightmare.

A dragon.

Clarion could not fathom how such a thing existed. She did not know how she was supposed to face something like this. Her terror rooted her to the spot. Her hands trembled violently, and that spark of starlight within her felt terribly small in the face of something so immense. Fear was not only raw, instinctual terror, or death nipping at your heels. It was this, too: despair.

The dragon opened its mouth to reveal row after row of serrated teeth, and a sulfuric light spilled into the darkness between them. It took her only a moment to realize that it was a ball of fire, ready to be unleashed.

“Clarion!”

Clarion startled at the distant sound of Milori’s voice. She looked up to find Milori, banging on the ice from above. His face was indistinct, but she could see the desperatebeliefshining out of him.

“Don’t forget what you promised me!”

It jolted Clarion out of her stupor—enough to startle the faintest laugh from her. It had been such a beautiful wish—one worth fighting for.

No, she could not surrender now.