Page 63 of Wings of Starlight

“Petra and I need to finish getting ready.” Clarion picked up a cosmetic brush, then a shallow pot of eye paint. Inside was a gold pigment made from a mixture of clay and pixie dust. “Do you want any, Artemis?”

Artemis examined her as though assessing a threat. “No, thank you. I’ll leave you to it.”

Clarion lifted one shoulder. “Suit yourself.”

Petra shrank back against the wall as Artemis brushed past her. When the door clicked shut behind her, Petra crossed the room in a flutter of ivy skirts and fire-bright curls. “You didn’t tell me she was going to be here.”

“She’s always here.” Clarion twisted the lid off her eye paint. Unable to resist, she added, “She’s off duty tonight, you know.”

Petra’s face lit up. “Really?”

Clarion gasped. She had notintendedto catch Petra out, but now she’d all but confirmed what she’d suspected for years. She jabbed the brush at Petra. “I knew it!”

“There’s nothing to know!”

Petra looked ready to snatch the brush away from her, or else flee out of the nearest window. It did nothing to tamp down the spark of mischief. “Oh, I think there is.”

“It doesn’t matter, anyway.” Petra buried her face in her hands. “She’s terrifying.”

Clarion resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “Just ask her to dance. She’s not going to bite you.”

“She might stab me, though,” Petra said darkly.

Clarion grinned. How easy it was to fall into this pattern with her. It felt so normal that she’d nearly forgotten about their last fraught conversation. She’d nearly forgotten that tonight, she would have to slip past her.

Both you and Elvina are depending on me for your schemes to work. Being in this position isn’t easy for me.

The memory—the reminder of the distance wedged between them—twinged painfully. If Petra knew she planned to sneak out to Winter tonight, she would try to stop her. And now that it was clear their plan hadn’t fully succeeded, she needed to speak with Milori more than ever. There had to be something they could do—anything to prevent Elvina from using what Petra had armed her with.

Petra’s expression softened with concern. “What is it?”

“There’s just a lot on my mind lately. Coronation things.” Clarion forced a smile. In an effort to busy herself, she shuffled a few glass bottles of fragrances around. They clacked together, too loud in the fragile silence. “Come here. Sit.”

Petra perched gingerly on the edge of her bed.

Clarion swiveled to face her, nearly knocking their knees together. She dabbed her brush in the eye paint, then took Petra’s chin in her fingers. “The usual?”

“Yes.” After a moment, she added, “But it has to look especially good. For no particular reason.”

“Of course not,” said Clarion, with only a touch of impishness.

Bracing her wrist against Petra’s cheekbone, Clarion daubed gold onto Petra’s eyelids. Her bracelets clinked together softly, and Petra’s steady breath fanned out against her skin as she worked. Clarion fell into a practiced rhythm, feathering and layering the pigment across her brow bone. When she finished with Petra’s eyes, Clarion switched to her fluffiest brush and dusted pixie dust across Petra’s cheekbones. It was all she needed. Anything else would conceal her freckles.

“Open your eyes,” Clarion said.

She did—and Clarion’s heart skipped a beat. The gold of the paint and the fierce red of her hair drew out every shade of green in her eyes. They were the color of a sunlit summer forest.

“Perfect.” Clarion set down her brush emphatically. “She’s going to fall in love with you.”

Petra wailed inarticulately in protest, and despite the fear and the stress, Clarion laughed. For a few more hours, maybe she could pretend everything was as it always had been.

By the time they arrived at the ball deep in the heart of Summer, the festivities were already in full swing. Clarion, Petra, and Artemis passed beneath the Fairy Circle—a ring of red-capped mushrooms—and into the ballroom, announced by the bright, resonant tone of a herald-talent’s voice.

The sight of it stole her breath away.

Glowworms, suspended from low-hanging branches, cast a soft blue aura over the grass. Every so often, fireflies pierced the darkness with pinpricks of light as they drifted through the air. Even without their aid, the entire clearing was impossibly bright, bathed as it was in moonlight. At its center, a spring burbled, made into a spectacle by the water-talents gathered around it. With a wave of their hands, droplets rose from the surface and refracted the light of the moon. Delicate strands of water wove through the air and dissipated into a shimmering curtain of mist.

In the very back of the ballroom, Clarion spotted her destination: a makeshift dais on the moss-covered stump of a sapling. From here, Clarion could make out the hooked points of Elvina’s crown and the radiance of her wings. When she craned her neck to get a better look, she glimpsed Commander Nightshade hovering just beside her. Soon, she would stand beside them as Elvina presided over the knighting ceremony.