Page 5 of Wings of Starlight

Oh, how she missed her, even when she was right here.

Years ago—before Elvina had barred Clarion from roaming freely, before their duties commandeered all their free time—the two of them had been inseparable. They’d sneak out—or perhaps more accurately, Clarion would drag Petra kicking and screaming from her workshop—to explore, with Artemis’s long-suffering presence just behind them. Now, Clarion had her training, and Petra had her work.

She specialized in intricate metalwork, but there was little she could not fix or make. Over the years, she’d fashioned everything from jewelry to utensils to sculptures—and dreamed bigger still. She had once spent an entire evening explaining her schematics for a prosthetic limb. Naturally, Elvina had taken a shine to both her art and her ingenuity and appointed her as the Crown’s personal tinker. Clarion still remembered how proud Petra had been—how her excitement had made her positively luminous. It filled Clarion up with the purest sort of joy she’d ever known. As much as Clarion longed for those carefree days they used to share, Petra deserved her success.

She deserved happiness.

Clarion offered Petra her hands. When she took them, Clarion pulled her off the floor and guided her back into the air. “I’ll see you as soon as I can.” After a moment, she added, “I’ll let you know if you need to flee for a life at sea.”

Petra moaned piteously. “Fine.”

Clarion opened her bedroom door. With one last beleaguered sigh, Petra flitted down the hallway. She paused for only a moment to shoot Artemis a lingering look. Artemis, for her part, remained perfectly impassive, but Clarion did not mistake the tension in her shoulders.

Honestly.One of these days, Clarion would orchestrate some sort of intervention. Ten years of pining was long enough.

“I’m ready,” she said.

Her bedroom doors opened into a vast chamber: a hollow that had formed in the trunk. Wooden walkways and staircases traced the perimeter, spiraling down to a level of solid heartwood. Beneath that was the living heart of the tree, where magic flowed through it like sap, up to the narrowest veins of its leaves and out to its farthest-flung roots.

Together, they made their way up the winding stairs toward Elvina’s quarters. The walls had been worn smooth with time and carved by countless carpentering-talents’ hands. Clarion always found something new to admire when she passed. Here and there, an image struck her: an ornate iris, the round eyes of an owl, the bend of the river that cut through Pixie Hollow. In places, the artwork was concealed by swatches of moss and flowering vines, but Clarion could still see pixie-dust-infused paint glittering underneath. No one ever scraped the foliage away; the Pixie Dust Tree, of course, should have a hand in its own styling.

They stopped in front of the massive set of doors that stood before Elvina’s chambers, each one engraved in breathtaking detail with a mirrored half of the Pixie Dust Tree. Artemis pushed them open for her, letting a blade of late-afternoon sunlight cut into the walkway. Drawing in a steadying breath, Clarion entered—and was met by the wall of portraits.

Paintings of all the queens that came before her stared back at her, all of them poised and powerful. With centuries between them, each one was done in a radically different style—but all of them had been wrought by a reverent hand. They filled her with a quiet awe. It seemed impossible that her portrait would ever hang beside theirs. When she was younger, she had searched them for any resemblance to her. Some shared her fair skin or hooded blue eyes, others her honey-brown hair. But all of them had the same wings: luminous and golden and shaped like a monarch butterfly’s. Now, she only worried that if she looked too closely, she would find disappointment in their faces.

Clarion tore her gaze away from the portraits. At the end of the row was Elvina, her silhouette slashed into the sunlit window. She wore a golden gown with wide, ruffled skirts; the fabric shimmered with the pixie dust woven into it. Golden motes trailed from the train of her gown and sparkled on the floor, swirling listlessly through the air. A crown—the one fashioned by Petra, Clarion noted—sat atop her head; it towered high above her, curling back in the shape of a goat’s horns. In it, she looked imposing, exactly as a governing-talent fairy should be.

“You’re late,” she said wearily. It was not an accusation as much as it was a statement. It had happened before. Both of them knew it would happen again.

Clarion did her best not to wilt at her dissatisfaction. “I’m sorry.”

Elvina turned to face her. Clarion couldn’t help noticing how tired the queen looked today. Streaks of gray threaded through her brown hair, and the brightness of her gown washed out the cool undertones of her white skin. Even so, her expression brooked no arguments or groveling. There was something unknowable in her green eyes, the remote and uncompromising look of a fairy who had lived a hundred lifetimes. Sometimes, it daunted Clarion, this glimpse of her future.

“For a good reason, I trust,” said Elvina.

“Oh, yes. A very good reason.” What that reasonwas, she did not know yet. But surely she could come up with some reasonable explanation if prompted.

Elvina made a dismissive sound, as though the particulars did not concern her. Clarion could hardly believe her luck. “Have you been practicing the techniques we discussed?”

Clarion nodded. She had been. Of course she had been. She could not say, however, that she’d made much progress in the last few months—a fact that endlessly dismayed her. From the moment a fairy first opened their eyes, they knew exactly what their talent was: their magical affinity, their calling in life, the thing that came to them as easily as breath. Talents, by most fairies’ accounts, gave everyone in Pixie Hollow purpose and joy. Clarion very much doubted her own would ever feel so effortless.

Elvina had told her that governing-talent magic was rooted in emotion—or rather, the absence of it. Only with perfect clarity of mind and complete focus could she find the freedom to manipulate the starlight burning bright within her. But as much as Clarion tried—whether through breathwork or exercise or sheer force of will—she could not empty herself of feeling. She could not shake that desperate hunger for connection.

“Good,” said Elvina. “Let me see.”

In an instant, Clarion’s hands went cold with nerves. No, she could not despair just yet. Perhaps this time, it would be different. She extended her hand. Deep within her chest, she felt that infinite wellspring of magic. If she applied enough pressure to it, if she held on with all her strength, she could bend it to her will.

Focus,she thought.Control it.

For a moment, a golden light bloomed in the center of her palm. It guttered like a candle in the breeze, but tentative hope kindled within her. She felt lightheaded from the effort, but with just a little more…

The light spluttered, then died. Clarion huffed out a breath, closing her fingers around the dying ember as if she could keep it. She tried not to let her disappointment show on her face.

Across the room, a bright light flared. When Clarion glanced up, Elvina was illuminated by her power. It balanced in her palm like a star in miniature, casting the planes of her face and all the room in stark relief. It gave off such brilliance and heat, Clarion had to resist the urge to raise her arm to shield herself.

Unlike light-talent fairies, governing-talent fairies did not need to manipulate a source of light. Born from fallen stars, they carried wells of starlight within themselves. Their magic could cut through absolute darkness—and most anything else in its path. It could be shaped into a shield to protect the queendom. More than anything, it was a symbol: something the citizens of Pixie Hollow could believe in.

Elvina clenched her fist, and the light extinguished. “Clarion.”