Glimmers of Thorns

by Emma Savant

  “Is that Mom’s ring?” Daniel said.

  He was sitting cross-legged on the stiff floral couch. Now, he leaned forward and peered at the objects on the table.

  “Crazy, right?” I said.

  “I always thought that thing was weird.”

  “And immensely powerful,” Amani said. “Your mother is a strong faerie to be able to wield it.”

  She leaned over and surveyed the items. She picked up the ring and turned the goblet over to examine it, but didn’t touch the wand. I didn’t blame her. I never wanted to come in contact with the thing again.

  Isabelle sat on the couch next to Daniel and watched. She stayed tense and a little ruffled. Between her irritation, Daniel’s eager fascination, Lucas’ apprehension, and my own fear of whatever would come next, the room thrummed with awkwardness. I couldn’t blame any of them. I had a feeling “chilling with Her Majesty” hadn’t been on anyone’s agenda for the day. Only Haidar seemed comfortable with the thought of hanging out and plotting the Oracle’s downfall.

  “How’s your garden?” Amani asked suddenly, turning on Haidar.

  He grinned. The expression was bizarre on his face. “Good as ever,” he said. “Takes all my energy to hold the house together, but the garden runs itself like it always has.”

  “Excellent,” Amani said. “You’ll be able to cut back on the house stuff if this all goes to plan.”

  She turned back to the table and turned the quartz ring over between her fingers.

  Whatever calm I had found in the car was fleeing fast. Beneath it, all I had to offer the world was the electric web of tension and panic that passed for my skin.

  I felt something brush my finger. A second later, Lucas took my hand in his and held it tight.

  I let out a long breath. The staticky feeling faded. I felt my heartbeat, soft and steady in my chest.

  “I have a plan,” Amani said.

  She looked up. She didn’t seem quite as drained as the last time I’d seen her, but she didn’t look on top of the world, either. Dark circles had made a home under her eyes, and her face was strained tight with the effort of keeping everything under control.

  “Haidar, I’m going to need your help,” she said. She looked around the room, her dazzling green eyes fixing each of us briefly in turn. “Anyone else, you’re welcome to go. This is going to be… not safe.”

  “Our lives are not safe,” Isabelle said. Her tone was flat, but I felt a begrudging sincerity behind the words. Amani must have felt it too, because she smiled, and Isabelle looked steadily back, and then Isabelle nodded like they’d come to some kind of agreement.

  Haidar watched this exchange between the two women, and a look crossed his face that could almost pass for exasperation.

  “We’re staying,” Daniel said. “I mean, you’ve obviously already got Olivia in your pocket, no offense, and I want to help if I can.”

  “Trust me,” Amani said. She pursed her lips at him like they were in on a secret together. “Olivia will not fit in my pocket.”

  Daniel tapped his nose.

  “Ah, metaphor!” he said loudly. “I get it!”

  I wished I was close enough to elbow him in the ribs. Instead, I said, “Yes, I’m in. Obviously. What do you need?”

  Amani looked up in my direction, but her eyes didn’t land on me.

  “Lucas?” she said softly.

  He nodded, and something passed between them, a kind of recognition that he belonged.

  “I’m in,” he said.

  I leaned up against him.

  “In that case, here’s the plan,” Amani said. She glanced around at us again. “I don’t need to tell you that this doesn’t leave this room.”

  She walked to the other side of the bay window and looked up at the sky. It was empty except for heavy pewter clouds. Somewhere beyond them, the sun was setting. The end of the day came with no glorious orange sunset, just a slow fade to darkness.

  “This house is powerful,” she said. “The garden, even more so. Now that the goblet’s back, we’ll be able to harness that power.”

  “It’ll be enough,” Haidar said.

  She picked the goblet up and spun its stem between her fingers. The deep crimson jewels on its side gleamed.

  “We’re going to summon Kelda,” she said. “Haidar will bind her to his grounds. I think the garden will be best. Once we have her locked down, we’ll talk.”

  “You’re going to all this trouble so you can talk,” Isabelle said.

  Amani held the goblet up and let it catch the gloomy light from the window. She looked at it intently, as though it held the answers to this whole problem.

  “Kelda and I have a long history,” she said. “Maybe I can get through to her. We’ll start with a civil conversation.” She set the goblet down with a thunk. “If that fails, we’ll take away her powers.”

  “No biggie,” Daniel said.

  “There’s a good chance that spell will get tangled with Kelda’s rage and kill us all,” she said. “Anyone who wants to leave is still welcome to do so.”

  No one moved. I wasn’t about to be the first one to head for the door.

  Amani let out a deep, exhausted breath. Then her chin lifted and she looked at each of us.

  She laid out the plan. We listened intently, each of us memorizing what we’d have to do and when. When Amani turned to Isabelle to instruct her on keeping out the sprites when we let Kelda in, I looked up at Lucas.

  “Stay close to me,” I said softly.

  He looked down, surprised. His floppy hair looked darker than usual against his worry-pale face.

  “In the garden,” I said. “Stay close. I need you.”

  He couldn’t tell if I meant it. He was no Glim. He was barely allowed into this world.

  But today had been all the proof I needed that he could make a difference. He was the only person here today who’d saved me from Kelda’s sprites. He was also the only person who’d given me a moment of calm in all this mayhem.

  I held tightly to his hand and wished I had the words to tell him.

  “We’re going to do this tomorrow,” Amani said. “Right at sunset. For now, we need to get to sleep.”

  The room fell silent. Finally, I stood. Lucas followed me out.

  I put on my pajamas and brushed my teeth in the bathroom that adjoined my busy green room. My mind raced so quickly as I brushed that I couldn’t keep track of the thoughts.

  Not all that long ago in the grand scheme of things, I’d been complaining about being a faerie godmother because it dragged me too deep into the Glimmering world. Now, I was in so far that I couldn’t remember what the world had been like without warring Glim leaders and sprite armies and creepy tar-black streams.

  At the edges of my thoughts, like a threatening ghost, Imogen lurked. It seemed impossible that I’d talked to her only hours ago. Our history ran over and over in my mind. How long had she been under the Oracle’s control? Had it begun right before Imogen’s Proctor Exam, or had Kelda been working on her even earlier than that? And how had I not noticed?

  Imogen had always been the one to dive headfirst into things and worry about consequences later. I’d been the one who made sure she never went too far. That had always been our pattern, and I’d failed her as a friend.

  I spat into the sink. I wished I could wash all of this down the drain.

  A gentle knock sounded at my door. I dropped the toothbrush on the counter.

  “Come on in,” I called.

  I heard footsteps. When I came out of the bathroom, Lucas had climbed the carpeted stairs to my bed and was sitting on the coverlet. His shoulders were as tense and tired as mine felt, and behind him, the dark window showed the faint golden reflection of the room. A single lamp gave off the only light. I hadn’t made the bed this morning, but in my absence, it had made itself. The white-and-green blankets and pillows were once again pristine, as though the bed had been not only made but ironed, too.

  He patted the bed bes
ide him. I climbed up and sat down. It should have been thrilling, sitting on a bed with a gorgeous guy, with everyone else in the house too busy to come check up on us.

  But I just felt overwhelmed.

  I curled up on top of the coverlet, facing away from him. I pulled my hair from the back of my neck and tucked it under my head like a tangled pillow. My heart fluttered like a bird’s, but not with excitement or the good kind of nerves that should have come with having Lucas so close to me. Instead, I just felt sick.

  “I don’t want to do this,” I said. My voice came out so soft and timid I didn’t think he’d heard me.

  But then, I felt the bed shift as he lay down next to me and curled his body around mine. He wrapped an arm around me.

  “I don’t think anyone would want to do this,” he said softly. His breath was warm against the back of my neck. “Queen Amani looked as scared as the rest of us.”

  I nuzzled my back deeper into his chest. He ran his hand up and down my arm.

  “She wouldn’t have asked you if she didn’t think you could do it,” he said. “I don’t know Queen Amani like you do, but I can tell she believes in you and cares about you. I don’t think she’d risk you if it was too dangerous.”

  “I don’t think she has a choice,” I said.

  My heartbeat slowed to something in the ballpark of normal as his fingertips tickled my skin. I let my entire body expand like a balloon and then collapse with a deep sigh. Lucas kept holding me and moving his hand across my arm and back until the world took on the soft, velvety gray tinge that came right before sleep.

  “I missed you when I moved away,” he said softly.

  I didn’t respond. It felt like too much work to pull myself into full consciousness. But his words still warmed me. I’d missed him, too.

  “I was so happy to see you when I came back,” he murmured. “Sorry I didn’t stay in touch. I had good intentions, but, you know. I suck at texting.”

  His hand wandered up into my hair. I wished I could fall asleep like this every single day.

  “That text you sent me, right after Imogen and I started dating and you guys stopped talking,” he said.

  His voice was so quiet I had to focus to hear what he was saying.

  “I got it,” he said. “I never said anything because I didn’t know what to say. I’d never realized you thought about me like that. I guess I just didn’t think you would. You always seemed too smart and focused to waste time thinking about guys. I didn’t realize until that message how much I wanted you to think of me that way.”

  He must think I was asleep, I realized drowsily. Why else would he be saying all this now? I tried to stay asleep, or at least to act like it.

  I wanted this conversation. I wanted to follow it through to every possible confusion.

  But not now, when my relaxation was just a Band-Aid over the buzzing dread that filled me every time I remembered the Oracle.

  If I tried to tell Lucas how much I liked him now, I was such a nervous, half-asleep mess that I’d probably ruin it. And I could not afford to ruin this.

  “I guess it’s not going to happen now,” he whispered. “Dude.” His breath burned into the back of my neck. I felt his lips hovering just inches away, and it took everything I had not to lean back and close the distance between us.

  “But I just wanted you to know,” he said.

  His voice faded to only the sound of his breathing, almost keeping time with mine.

  I wanted to turn around and kiss him. I wanted to tell him I’d heard everything, and that maybe it wasn’t so impossible for us to be together.

  But magic was gathering throughout this house. I felt it, tingling and sparking its way up through the walls and out into the garden. I felt the storm brewing, the heavy weight of the Oracle as Amani and Haidar prepared the grounds for her to descend.

  I didn’t have time to want him.

  I sighed and nuzzled further into him. I felt his surprise, then his arm as it came back around me and pulled me close to him.

  We must have fallen asleep, because when a gentle knock sounded at the door, Lucas gasped awake and my eyes flew open. The room came into sudden, sharp focus. Late morning sunlight streamed through the curtained windows.

  The door creaked open.

  “It’s time,” Isabelle said softly.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Beyond the garden, the sky hung with pale silver clouds. The clouds had broken apart near the horizon, letting in a few rays of fading evening sunshine.

  Below us, in a sunken garden lined with an irregular stone wall, Amani paced. Haidar stood not far from her, rolling the golden goblet between his palms. Whatever this garden was usually, Haidar had cleared it so that only a circular grassy lawn remained. Rose bushes lined the tops of the walls like sentinels, blooming crimson and ivory and letting off enough perfume that it made me dizzy for a moment.

  “Go ahead,” Isabelle said. “Daniel and I will watch the perimeter. We’ve locked everything down except this clearing. If any sprites come in, they’ll come in here. We’ll keep them away from you.”

  Daniel gave me a thumbs-up. He stood by Isabelle. His face was as white as mine felt, though it was hard to tell how much of that was our milky Feye skin and how much was the sheer terror of what we were about to do.

  Lucas put a warm hand on my arm.

  “I’ll be up here too,” he said. “I can’t do much, but I’m cheering you on.”

  His frustration at not being able to help was palpable. I wished for a moment that I could trade places with him. But that wouldn’t be fair. I wouldn’t send anyone I liked into this mess.

  I pulled my glasses off my nose and held them out to him.

  “Would you hold these?” I said. “I need to be able to see what everyone’s doing.”

  He took them from me delicately, almost reverently.

  With the glasses gone, magic sparked like static electricity in the plants around us. The grass, rose bushes, and trees glittered green, each speck of magic flashing to light and then fading again.

  I let out a final sigh, then slipped off my shoes. I walked down the three mossy stone steps into the garden. They were damp and cool. Above me, Daniel walked around the clearing to the far side. They positioned themselves across from one another, Daniel toward the edge of the garden, Isabelle by the mansion. Below them, Amani paced to stand on one side of the lawn and waved me to position myself across from her.

  The four of us stood at compass points and stared at each other across the distance. In the background, above us, Lucas hovered behind Isabelle. And in the center of the clearing, Haidar hulked with the goblet glinting in his hands.

  I looked at Amani across the clearing. Without my glasses, she stood in a whirl of gold.

  For a moment, I could almost hear her voice in my head, as clearly as I’d once been able to almost hear Imogen’s.

  Are you okay?

  I held her dark green gaze and nodded.

  I’m okay, I thought.

  It was almost a lie, but not quite. I didn’t like anything about this, but I stood on my own two feet, and my breathing was measured and under control.

  I stepped just barely to the left. The Oracle’s glinting silver wand lay at my feet. I didn’t need to use it yet, not until—and if—Amani gave the signal.

  I hoped I wouldn’t need to touch it today, for all our sakes.

  “One minute,” Amani called. “Haidar?”

  “I’m ready,” he said.

  My stomach flipped over.

  Haidar took three large steps backward toward the stone stairs, leaving the dead center of the grassy space clear. He sat cross-legged on the ground and put the goblet in front of him. Around us, magic tingled.

  We were really doing this. Not later, not someday, but now. I shivered and held my ground.

  Haidar leaned over his goblet. White light began to pour from his hands and into the cup. The air felt heavy and unseasonably warm. Far off, a bird chirped once an
d fell silent. As I watched, Haidar’s goblet filled with light, and then the whiteness began to froth and spill over the brim.

  Haidar’s bushy eyebrows drew together. The magic grew more opaque and he thrust it deeper into the cup.

  The goblet consumed the magic, and then I saw tiny tendrils of white begin to glow faintly, deep in the ground below us. The tendrils pushed out from the goblet’s base like blood in veins, and networked across the clearing. White light cast up from the ground onto Amani’s face, illuminating her from the bottom as the vague overcast light glazed her skin from the top.

  She met my gaze again. I nodded back: Still okay.

  Queen Amani raised her hands. Across the clearing, I lifted mine and mirrored her. My stomach churned again.

  And then she began to chant. I had no idea what she was saying, but I felt the magic, and I felt what she was doing with it. She called down the sky with her hands, reached deep into the air and sent a message all through the city: Kelda. Come to me.

  I closed my eyes and joined my thoughts with her own, picturing the Oracle as I’d last seen her, shifting and dappled beneath the waterfall.

  The air above us filled with a high shriek. Startled, I opened my eyes in time to see a white-gowned figure land hard on the ground in front of us, trailing sparkles and smoke. Her whole body shone with blue light.

  She landed in a crouch, then leapt to her feet and whirled on Queen Amani. The skirt of her glittering white gown swirled around her.

  “What the hell are you doing?” the woman snapped.

  She winced and twisted. The magic glowing in the ground seemed to brighten around her, putting a spotlight under her writhing figure. She wrenched her gown up, showing bare feet and ankles wrapped in white tendrils of magic.

  But no matter how she moved or twisted, and no matter what kinds of spells flew from her fingertips toward the ground, nothing could move her.

  Kelda was stuck.

  Her glittering black eyes landed on Haidar. In an instant, her focus shifted. She grew deathly still and raised her hands. An electric blue stream of light pulsed from them and landed on the goblet. I thought she meant her magic to mix with his, and I tensed, waiting for his spell to rebound or explode or otherwise kill us all.