Page 17 of Wings of Starlight

“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 façade. When it came down to the things that mattered—the decision-making, the composure, the rawpower—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.

“Whatisthat?” 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 whateverthatwas.

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.Ihave to do something.Youwill 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.