Page 78 of Wings of Starlight

He did not answer her. He only took the reins in one hand and snapped them, urging Noctua into flight once more. He did not even flinch as they soared over the border. Passing into Spring felt like plunging into hot water. As it flooded over her, Clarion wanted to sob in both relief and horror. A winter fairy had no protection here.

“Please.” Her lips formed the word, but it came out as a bare wisp of sound.

Had he heard her at all?

With her head lolled against his shoulder, all she could see was his jaw set in determination and his steely gaze fixed straight ahead. His pale skin had already begun to flush. Sweat beaded at his temple. Leaned against him as she was, she could feel his heart racing.

The heat was too much for him.

“Your wings.” Her voice was thick with emotion. When had she begun crying? It had come on so suddenly.

“Clarion.” He said her name like a plea. “Weighed against your life, they are nothing to me. I would make that trade every time.”

Those words nearly broke her. Tears slipped freely down her cheeks, but she had no strength left to brush them away. She could hardly focus on him; the world swam, marbled by the rheum in her eyes. “Why?”

“Pixie Hollow needs you,” he said quietly. “As warden, I have a duty to defend Pixie Hollow. That means protecting you.”

If only she had the wherewithal to argue with him…She would rail against him with everything she had. How could his own safety mean so little to him? But she’d been reduced to a captive in her own body, forced to watch as he sacrificed himself for her. It was the worst kind of torture she could imagine.

“Be angry if you must,” he said, “but I can’t lose you.”

Miserably, she understood she would do the same.

What fools their hearts made of them.

Clarion knew the moment they crossed into Summer. Below them, it was a blur of lush greens and golden blooms. But its heat sighed over her skin as though welcoming her home. Water trickled down her neck as the snow tangled in her hair melted. Slowly, sensation returned to her extremities. She did not want it, not when it felt like a thousand needles piercing her once-numb skin. The warmth of the air, however, did nothing for the cold within her. Her chest was as dark and empty as the space between stars.

Milori’s breathing grew ragged, stirring the hairs curling around her face. This was, by far, the most dangerous place in Pixie Hollow for him. At night, at least, it was only muggy—nothing like the sweltering afternoons beneath the punishing sun.

The familiar scent of feverfew wafted up to her. When Clarion turned her bleary gaze outward, she saw every white petal drenched in moonlight. Never before had it looked so beautiful, or so horrible.

“There,” she said miserably.

When they alighted in the field, Milori slid off Noctua’s back and landed heavily, as though he could barely support his own weight. He approached the door to the healer-talents’ clinic with slow, staggering steps. Clarion could not look away from his wings. They were folded against his back, but they seemed to be…wilting.

No,she thought.Melting.

They dripped from the ends like icicles in the thaw of early spring. The very sight of it made her stomach roil with nauseous waves of guilt. She could not imagine the resolve it took to push through that kind of pain. He knocked, his fist falling weakly against the door.

Within moments, a healing-talent appeared on the threshold, backlit by the illumination filtering out from within. Clarion could not hear what they were saying from here, but she could imagine the general shape of their conversation. She watched the emotions tear through the healer as Milori spoke: confusion giving way to shock—and then to the grim calm born from urgency.

She nodded to him, then disappeared back into the clinic. The door, she left ajar. A messenger firefly crawled through the gap and set off toward the Pixie Dust Tree, its belly blinking with the emergency signal.

Milori returned to her. “I’m going to have to move you.”

With a soft grunt of effort, he lowered her from Noctua’s back. He scooped her into his arms and carried her into the clinic. His skin, usually so cold against hers, felt feverishly hot. Candles burned dimly, melted down to puddles of wax in their shallow dishes. The soothing smell of healing herbs—minty chickweed and acrid burdock root—perfumed the air. The only thing she could concentrate on was the rhythmicdrip, drip, dripof his wings against the floorboards.

“Back here,” someone called to Milori.

Milori made his way haltingly through the clinic. In the near dark, Clarion couldn’t make out much, but she knew when they passed beneath the curtain of succulents. Their waxy leaves clattered together and brushed almost tenderly across her face. He took her to the room reserved for fairies in critical condition. It still did not feel quite real, even as he laid her in the cot. Her teeth chattered. Milori unfastened the brooch at his throat and laid his cloak over her. Thinking of her, even now.

“Go,” Clarion whispered. “Please.”

He looked stricken. “I can’t.” He knelt at her bedside. “Not yet.”

“Please.Milori.” She fumbled for something, anything, to sway him, but she had nothing. She could barely make sense of the sounds that had come out of her mouth. Through her delirium, she could see the sheen of sweat on his face. She could hear the healers shouting at one another. Clarion registered only fleeting sensations. Cool water at her lips. Glimmers of pixie dust. The prick of a needle. And warmth, slowly, slowly returning. She did not know if it was minutes or hours or days that had passed when she heard a voice.

“Warden?”