Glimmers of Thorns

by Emma Savant

  “And what’s Amani going to do?” Kelda said. She gave me a sardonic smile. “Be the Faerie Queen? Forget about me? Make decisions without my input? We’ve been there and done that a dozen times while you were still in diapers.”

  For the briefest instant, I knew what it was like to be the queen when her eyes flashed and sparked with faerie rage. I felt the magic and the outrage thunder inside my body, and when it wanted to crash out toward Kelda, I didn’t stop it.

  I took a few steps to the side and picked up Kelda’s silver wand, lying almost forgotten on the grass.

  “We have your wand,” I said. I held it up. “You have an hour to think about your decision. Should you not comply, Queen Amani will strip you of your powers, and I will help her.”

  I whirled on my heel and walked away.

  “That’s not my wand,” Kelda called after me.

  For the briefest instant, I froze. But I couldn’t let her see me hesitate. I kept walking.

  “You really think I’d leave it lying in a creek?” she said.

  She laughed, and the sound sank like lead into my gut.

  But I still didn’t look back. Kelda hadn’t earned it.

  “Haidar, Isabelle, Daniel, stand guard,” I ordered.

  I swept up the stairs past Amani. The queen scrambled to her feet and followed.

  Chapter Thirty

  I went through the arched wooden door Haidar had taken us through when we’d first come to the mansion. Amani came in after me and locked the door behind her. We faced each other in the stone potting shed. Amani’s aura lit the space with a faint golden glow.

  Even here, I wasn’t convinced Kelda couldn’t hear us, so I kept my voice to a murmur.

  “What does she mean, that’s not her wand?” I hissed.

  Amani ran a hand through her hair.

  “I should have guessed,” she said. “Knowing her, she’s paranoid enough to have fakes hidden all over the city in powerful bodies of water. Let me see it.”

  I held it out to her. She took it. Tense anticipation covered her face. She touched the cool metal, then frowned.

  “Nothing,” she said.

  She turned it over and held her other hand over its tip. Still nothing.

  She slammed it onto a dusty wooden table covered in bags of potting soil.

  “If that was really one of her wands, I wouldn’t even be able to touch it,” she said. “She’d have powerful enchantments on it to keep it from ever falling into my hands.”

  “Why does she hate you so much?” I said.

  Amani glanced out the window. We couldn’t see Kelda from here, but between the branches of bushes and trees, the dazzling blue of her aura glowed.

  “We were best friends,” Amani said. “I screwed it up.”

  The look on her face made it clearer than clear that she didn’t want to talk about it. But I’d been dragged into all this, and they’d been flat-out weird in the garden. I’d earned a little context.

  “What happened?” I said.

  “We’re both ambitious people,” she said. “At some point, I must have decided my ambition was worth more than the friendship. I wouldn’t do it that way again.”

  The increasing tightness in her jaw made it clear I wasn’t going to get any more of that story today. I picked up the fake wand and twirled it between my hands.

  “Does she have the wand on her?” I said.

  “No,” Amani said. “She wouldn’t bring it here. Or at least, she would have transported it the second she realized what Haidar was doing.”

  “Maybe we won’t need it.”

  “You really believe that?” Amani said.

  I didn’t even have to answer. I still hoped, but I knew what empty hope felt like.

  There was no way Kelda was going to back down. Even if she could be convinced that was she was doing was wrong, she was never going to give in, because that would mean letting Amani win.

  “This is stupid,” I said.

  “You were good out there,” Amani said.

  She smiled. I wasn’t sure what the smile meant. Was it You did good out there this one time or See, you’d be a great Faerie Queen after all? I’d take the former, but the latter was never going to happen.

  More than ever, I couldn’t wait to be gone.

  I glanced around the potting shed. The very presence of the bags of soil on the shelves made me calmer. This was where I belonged.

  “If I had to bet, and if I could only make one guess, I’d say the wand was in her Fountain,” Amani said.

  Exactly nothing about that sounded okay.

  “I’m going to take a wild shot in the dark here and say we can’t just waltz in,” I said.

  Amani scoffed. “I couldn’t blast my way in with an army of sprites,” she said. “She has that thing barricaded against me on every level. Trust me, I’ve tried.”

  “I’m not going to be able to just walk in, either,” I said. “She’s got to have all kinds of protective spells on it. And no sprite’s going to help us.”

  “We need the help of someone the Oracle trusts,” Amani said. “Someone who’s close to her, the kind of person who’d have a standing invitation. But of course, we don’t know anyone like that.”

  She looked at me. I read her thought almost before she’d finished forming it.

  “No,” I said. “Absolutely not.”

  “Imogen Dann is her heir,” Amani said. “She can get you in no matter what Kelda’s set up.”

  “No,” I said. “There has got to be another option.”

  “It’s that or keep her in a cage for the next couple hundred years and hope she doesn’t break out and kill everyone out of spite,” Amani said. “Your choice.”

  “That choice sucks,” I said.

  “So does the one you just gave her,” Amani said. “It’s a day of rough decisions for everyone.” She let out a deep breath and seemed to deflate a little. “Trust me, I know.”

  “You still care about her,” I said.

  “I’m about to do the unthinkable to my best friend,” Amani said. Her eyes glittered, and this time, there was nothing faerie about it. “You at least still have the option to go talk to yours.”

  Perspective was the worst. I pressed on the back of my neck, feeling tension collecting and knowing I had no time to deal with the impending headache.

  “Fine,” I said.

  Amani put a hand on my arm. “I ditched her,” she said. “And I destroyed our friendship. Don’t repeat my mistakes.”

  “I’m not sure it’s up to me,” I said.

  I handed Kelda’s decoy wand back to Amani.

  “I’ll enchant you there,” Amani said.

  I waved her off. “I’ll get Lucas to drive me,” I said. “I need the time to think.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  As it turned out, the drive didn’t help me think at all. I was too freaked out to string thoughts together, so I just sat there, staring out the window at the falling night as Lucas drove.

  He reached out a few times to hold my hand. I squeezed it and held on every time, but he could only help so much. This was my shattered friendship and my mission. It was up to me to deal with it.

  The streets of Portland were eerily empty tonight. The sprites had done their job. An occasional Glim sauntered down the sidewalk or middle of the street like they owned the place. Other than that, no motion besides the flickering leaves of trees interrupted the lamp-lit city. Signs taped to lampposts ordered people to Join #DarkForest or Choose Peace!, but there was no one to read them.

  “Are you sure she’s going to be there?” Lucas said. He pitched his voice low, as if knowing I’d startle at anything louder.

  I shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  He turned left onto the road that led past the Oracle’s Fountain. My shoulders tensed and hair prickled down my arms. We were too close for comfort, and everyone expected me to get even closer. They wanted me to march right inside.

  I was insane for agre
eing to this.

  Lucas pulled into a metered parking spot by the park, not far from the Fountain. Dark trees hovered overhead, taunting us.

  “I’m not coming with you,” he said.

  I nodded. Imogen was wildly unlikely to let me in as it was, and that was assuming she was even here.

  “Keep the car running in case we need to leave fast,” I said. “I don’t know how long this is going to take.”

  I made a quick, fervent wish that Imogen was still at Gilt so I wouldn’t have to see her yet.

  Then I wished that godmother wishes counted for anything.

  I pulled my wand out of my hair and shoved my glasses up onto the top of my head where they’d be out of the way. I twisted my hair into a ponytail.

  Imogen always said ponytails in my frizzy hair made me look like I’d tamed a wild raccoon and attached it to the back of my head. I could stand a little raccoon-taming energy right now. Sad as it was to admit, even that sounded more badass than my current “wanting to hide under a bed in Haidar’s mansion” vibe.

  “Good luck, Liv,” Lucas said. “You just told off the Oracle, so you’re probably going to handle this just fine.”

  It was hard to tell if he was being serious or just trying to make me feel better.

  I climbed out of the car, reassured myself with one last look at his steady face, and shut the door.

  The Fountain rose out of the darkness within seconds. It seemed to loom larger as I approached, the Oracle’s magic and its own imposing architecture conspiring to make me feel about as important as one of the sidewalk slabs under my feet.

  I stepped down one of the large amphitheater stairs that led to the Fountain’s base.

  Water poured from the pools at its top. But it wasn’t just water. Here and there, dropping like strands of Christmas tinsel or tiny skinny snakes, streaks of silver magic plunged down to the glittering pools below. Each strand spiraled in the water before dissipating in an explosion of glittering sparks, making the bottom layer of the Fountain look like it was filled with shifting stars.

  “Imogen?” I called.

  Silence greeted me, but I was too much of a faerie these days to believe in it. This silence was listening to my every word.

  “We have Kelda,” I said.

  I raised my wand, prepared to defend myself in case any sprites came whistling down at this treason. But the silence kept waiting.

  “I need to talk to you so we can figure out what happens next,” I said. “It’s down to you and me.”

  The tinsel strands of magic began to cluster together, falling more quickly near the center of the Fountain. As I watched, they grew so thick together that they formed a solid rectangle of white light, falling down to create what I thought might be a doorway.

  I stepped forward and into the pool. Cold water gushed around my ankles and seeped into my shoes. Closing my eyes did nothing to shield me from the brightness of the doorway; it only made my eyelids glow violent red as I stepped forward. The whispering, burbling sound of rushing water filled my ears as I passed through.

  And then, darkness.

  I opened my eyes.

  It took a moment for my vision to adjust. When it did, I saw dim reflections, not objects. Here, a tall stripe of reflected light stretching to the ceiling. There, a glint that suggested distance. A moment later, the space shifted into clarity as my eyes made sense of what it all meant.

  The entire place was black, gleaming and polished. Jet floors stretched out in front of me and disappeared into shadow. Tall inky columns supported the ceiling, which likewise would have disappeared if not for the vague sparkle that emanated from it.

  Blue pools of light clicked on abruptly near the floor, spaced every few feet along the walls. The room filled instantly with shifting, luminous blue. It took me a moment to realize the pools of light were literally pools—small silver bowls filled almost to the brim. The water glowed and cast a rippling illumination onto the black surfaces.

  The overall effect was beautiful, but it was cold, too.

  I looked around, waiting to see Imogen or a door I should go through. But there were no doors here, only more shimmering rectangular curtains of water set into the walls, falling from the ceiling and disappearing into the floor. They whispered in the blue darkness, but no strands of magic indicated where I should go.

  Footsteps clicked ahead of me. I spun toward the sound, but it was a moment before I saw her walk out of the shadows. Her hair was swept up and she wore the kind of gown we both would have died over last year, a slinky silver number that made her look like a curvy goddess on her thirtieth jaunt down the red carpet.

  “Where’s Kelda?” she demanded.

  “Hi, nice to see you too,” I said.

  She threw a hand out toward me. A white ball of magic flew toward me with a crackling sound. I dodged to avoid it; it hit the wall behind me and fizzled out.

  I brought my wand down in a sharp motion toward the floor. A shield sprang up in front of me, glistening translucent and barely visible in the darkness.

  “That’s really not getting you on my good side,” I said.

  Not that she needed to be on my good side. I needed to get on hers, at least if I wanted her to hand over the wand.

  But who was I kidding? The Imogen standing in front of me was never going to help anyone who wanted to hurt her future with Kelda.

  “You hate me,” I said. “I get it. Can we put that aside for thirty seconds so we can figure this out?”

  “Hate implies I care,” Imogen said. “I’m indifferent.”

  “You’re a good liar,” I said. “But not that good. People don’t throw fireballs at people they don’t care about. Trust me. I am one-hundred percent apathetic about Mr. Johnson who lives across the street, and I haven’t thrown magic at his head once.”

  I sounded like an idiot. Why was I rambling? I needed to get the wand and get out.

  I took a step toward her. “What are you doing here?” I said.

  “I think that’s my question for you,” she said.

  I didn’t even recognize her face anymore. She looked like Imogen on the surface, but behind it, all her facial expressions were wrong. My Imogen smiled; this one glared daggers. My Imogen was melodramatic and threw herself on furniture; this one swept around like an empress.

  It wasn’t wrong of us to change. We weren’t that far from college and adult life. Some growing was inevitable.

  But she hadn’t grown. She just looked like a light inside her had gone out.

  “What has Kelda offered you that’s so good that you’d join her on this?” I said. “Come on, Gen. You can fight this.”

  The curse that clung to her was so obvious that I was stunned I hadn’t realized it earlier. Even so, no curse was so strong that Imogen, of all people, couldn’t fight it if she wanted to.

  “She has vision,” Imogen said.

  “She’s an insecure, manipulative child,” I said.

  Imogen’s eyes flashed. I took another step toward her.

  “You know that,” I said. “You have to know that if you’ve taken one second to think about it. She pitted us against each other. Us.”

  “Maybe ‘us’ didn’t mean as much as you thought,” Imogen said.

  She cast an imperious glance down at me, then turned and walked away. I followed her.

  “Why didn’t you come talk to me?” I said. “When you found out I hadn’t told you about Amani?”

  Imogen spun on me, and I threw up a hand.

  “Which, I know, I should have told you,” I said, before she had a chance. “I was wrong.”

  She tightened her lips into a thin line and kept walking.

  “Why didn’t you just ask me about it?” I said. “Don’t you think it’s weird, that you didn’t even ask me?”

  “Why would I ask someone who was already lying to me?” Imogen said.

  “I wasn’t lying,” I said. “I just hadn’t told you yet. I didn’t know how. You would have made me feel li
ke crap for not taking her offer, and I already spend most of my time feeling like crap, okay?”

  She scoffed.

  “What?” I said.

  No answer. I grabbed her arm and pulled her to a stop. Her entire body stiffened, and I felt magic crackle along her skin as she prepared to send something else at me.

  “Seriously,” I said. I let go of her arm. “What?”

  She looked down at me. She was already taller than I was, and her glittering, super-high heels made the difference even more dramatic. I felt like a child standing next to a queen.

  An angry queen.

  “You feel like crap?” she said, like I’d just said the most outrageous, stupid thing she’d ever heard. “You, Miss High and Mighty Olivia, Champion of the Humdrums and youngest faerie godmother in a hundred years, feel like crap? You poor little rich girl.”

  “I’m the worst faerie godmother in a hundred years,” I corrected. “And I like the Humdrums because I, personally, am a shit faerie.”

  She rolled her eyes and kept walking toward the shadowed back of the room.

  Where did she get off? Had she not been there during our entire friendship?

  “I’m not like you, Imogen,” I said. I matched my strides to hers to keep up. “I’m not just magically good at everything I touch. I’m not pretty and talented and smart and popular and confident. So yes, I feel like crap.”

  “Give me a break,” she said.

  “Sorry if my feelings inconvenience you.”

  “Oh my god, Olivia, I’m not talking about your feelings,” she said. For an instant, she sounded like the Imogen I knew. And then it was gone as her voice took on a hard edge. “I’m not whatever all you just said. That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Have you met yourself?”

  She scoffed again and stopped in front of one of the waterfalls in the wall. As she looked at it, the water began to glimmer white. It parted in the middle, opening like curtains, and Imogen walked through. I followed close on her heels before she had a chance to shut me out.

  It only occurred to me after the water had closed again behind us that following Imogen deeper into the Oracle’s lair might not have been the smartest move of my life.