As Claire focused on a warm-blooded, lively, teasing Aquila, she began to feel the hum of magic zip through her. But the hum felt wrong somehow, off-pitch and squeaky. It jounced and jittered, instead of flowing through her with ease. Suddenly, it seemed to Claire as if she’d hit an oil slick. Her hum skidded, then scattered into nothingness.
“It’s not working,” she said, lifting her hand away. “It’s like there’s some sort of barrier around them that’s making my magic slide right off. I can’t get her to realize that she’s not rock.”
Claire looked at the gleaming strands of unicorn mane. Dad always said if you were going to do anything properly, don’t try to take shortcuts. A unicorn’s mane was not enough.
Claire stepped back so she could look Aquila and Anvil in the eye. “Don’t worry,” she said aloud, hoping that even though they couldn’t move, they could somehow hear her and understand. “We think the unicorn is nearby. Sophie found some of its mane. We’re going to find the last unicorn and …,” she paused, searching for the word, “un-rock you. Right, Sophie?” She looked at Sophie expectantly.
“Er, yes,” Sophie said, and she gingerly patted Aquila’s other arm. She glanced over at Claire. “We should look around and see if the Malchains have anything that could help us track the unicorn.”
“That’s a good idea,” Claire said, and she wished that the Malchains could have made a Kompass to track the unicorn, too. When Sophie had asked Aquila why she couldn’t just forge a Kompass or Looking Glass to find the unicorn, the Forger had explained that something about the strength of unicorn magic made crafted objects not work properly. A Kompass’s needle set for a unicorn would always spin, and a Looking Glass would only hold a bright, white light.
“But after that,” Claire continued, “we leave. Whoever did this might come back.”
They hurried into the main room of the cottage. Sophie began by checking out all the highest cupboards while Claire opened the drawers of a nearby chest. Nothing but cobwebs and spider prints. Shutting its lid, she peered beneath. Something glinted in the darkness.
Flattening her hand as much as she could, she reached under and grabbed something hard: the hilt of a sword. And as she pulled the weapon out from under the chest, she realized it wasn’t just any sword.
It was Fireblood.
Sena’s sword—the one she had given to Claire.
Delight tumbled over sadness as Claire took in the blade. Delight at seeing something familiar, because in this strange world, anything familiar was a gift. Sadness, because Aquila must not have found Sena yet. She’d promised she would find Nett and Sena and return the sword to the redheaded Forger.
But it seemed Aquila had been attacked before she’d had a chance to do either.
“I found the ReflecTent and their travel rucksacks,” Sophie whisper-called from across the room. “I’ve repacked them and stuffed in some seedcakes that still look okay.”
“I found Fireblood,” Claire said.
“Oh.” Claire watched as the same complex emotions flew across Sophie’s face. “Well, good. That’ll be useful, too.” She opened the door and stepped out, but Claire hesitated. It felt wrong to just leave the Malchains.
“Do you think they’ll be cold?” she blurted out.
Sophie’s head popped back in, and she pulled out two of the travelers’ blankets before hurrying back into the hallway. As carefully as she could, Claire wrapped the blankets around her friends’ shoulders.
“Should we lay them down?” Sophie asked.
Claire shook her head. “I think they’re too heavy for us. Besides, you know the Malchains. They would rather face danger standing up.”
Sophie gave a tight nod. “And I’d rather not face any danger at all, so let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere but here.”
CHAPTER
17
After traveling a safe distance from the cottage, they set up camp. It took longer than usual without Anvil to help them, but when Claire stood back to admire their handiwork, she was pleased. The ReflecTent only listed slightly to the right, but they had properly placed it in a small clearing where moonlight could find it.
“I thought wraiths were only scared of the sun?” Claire had asked the first night Anvil had silently set up two tents just like this, one for himself and one for the girls.
“True,” Anvil had said without elaboration. Sophie always claimed that his long silences made her uncomfortable, but Claire appreciated that he always allowed others room to think. She knew how important uncluttered space was in art.
“So,” Claire had said after realizing he wouldn’t continue. “How can the ReflecTent protect us?”
“Double reflection,” Anvil had replied, and with Claire’s promptings, he’d explained that all moonlight was truly just reflected sunlight.
“When the moonbeams hit the ReflecTent”—here he had smoothed out the aluminum foil–like material of the tent—“it turns the beams back into sunlight, driving away wraiths and protecting us once we’re inside.”
Looking at the ReflecTent now, Claire silently thanked the Malchains for the tent. They had helped the girls. Again.
With the sun nearly set, the girls hurried inside. Carefully, they snapped it shut and placed Fireblood by the entrance. After nibbling at the seedcakes (“At least it’s not more goat’s milk,” Sophie had pointed out), the girls laid out their bedrolls. Claire scooted in immediately, but Sophie stayed sitting up, poring over some of Aquila’s maps they’d found in her pack.
“She’s marked two spots,” Sophie said. Her finger slowly twirled the tip of her ponytail. “Both of them are north, so maybe we should head there?” She ruffled to another page, while Claire fiddled with the knot of unicorn mane and strained her ears. The only good thing about nighttime was that neither the Royalists nor the Gemmers would be wandering around—not with wraiths lurking everywhere.
Still, Claire listened to the night’s each and every sound. Back home, it was early summer, the mosquitoes just starting to fly, but here, dry leaves rattled and fell as the unfeeling wind shoved by.
Claire shivered.
“Don’t worry,” Sophie said, peering over a map toward Claire. “That’s just the Forest’s Reminder.”
“The what?”
“It’s what the Tillers call that sound you’re hearing, the sound of the wind through the trees.” Sophie nodded her head toward the outside.
“What’s it a reminder of?” Claire asked, hoping for a good story to distract her.
“To wish,” Sophie said, then she repeated herself, drawing out the word until it had a whistling quality to it: “wishhh, wisssh, wisssssh.” She beamed at Claire. “I really like it. Nett told me about it.”
A ping of surprise darted through Claire. She’d forgotten, as she often did, that Sophie had actually known Nett and Sena longer than Claire had, and shared a history with them that Claire did not. On the first day of their journey to Stonehaven, Claire had asked Sophie about a bunch of scratches she had on her legs—the same scratches that had started a bad fight with Mom back in Windemere’s gallery. Sophie had launched into a rollicking and raucous story about accidentally watering a Hugging Bramble, and the amount of Tillering Francis and Nett had needed to do to get her out of its embrace while Sena laughed until she cried.
Turning over in her sleeping roll, Claire didn’t think she’d ever be able to sleep—not with worries of Royalists and wraiths and war. Of Aquila and Anvil. Of Nett and Sena. But the journey so far had been exhausting, and her feet throbbed. Knowing Sophie was watching, and comforted by the quiet crinkle of the maps, Claire finally nodded off.
When her eyes opened again, something had changed. Her breath caught—was it Sophie?
She lurched upright, and saw that her sister was curled next to her, her chest rising and falling as she slept. Here and there, a loud snore tripped out. Claire’s heart resumed its normal rhythm. Sophie was still here. She hadn’t gone anywhere. But t
hen … what had woken her?
A flash of light played against the outside of the tent.
She almost called for Sophie, but if it was a Royalist’s lantern … She sat there, frozen, torn about what to do. She hated not knowing.
With a quick tap to the pencil behind her ear, Claire shimmied out of her sleeping bag and crawled to the entrance, careful to avoid Fireblood. As silently as she could, she unsnapped one of the metal clasps, and peeked through.
No one was there.
From far, far off, there was a rumble of thunder.
The campsite was as it had been.
But just as she was about to snap the tent shut, there was another flash of light. A far-off bolt of lightning, too far for even the storm’s rain to reach them.
But that wasn’t what made Claire hold her breath. Because in that flash of light, something else had momentarily glittered.
There was the slightest flicker of movement. A slight pulse of lightness against the dark. For one second, it seemed that maybe—that perhaps—a creature, swift as the frothy waters of the Rhona, stood at the lip of the river, drinking.
A deliciousness coursed through Claire, as sweet as warm honey. And for a second, she half thought that the movement was more than a trick of starlight. That maybe … just maybe …
Could it be the unicorn?
Her heart in her throat, Claire gingerly stepped out of the tent. She blinked.
The river was just the river.
She let out a breath. It had only been her imagination.
Except … There! On a log not too far from the tent were long, shimmering strands of silver.
They had not been there before.
A wonder as intricate and fragile as a snowflake crystallized inside Claire. The unicorn was here—or it had been.
“Soph—” Claire stopped herself before she could finish her sister’s name.
Here was a chance to prove to Sophie she wasn’t a coward. And if she found the unicorn first, she could ask him to give Sophie her magic. Maybe even, by the time Sophie woke up, she, too, would be a Gemmer.
As carefully as she could, Claire went back into the tent and reached for Sophie’s rucksack, quietly pulling out the slender flute. It was as cool as a raindrop in her hand. The first time she’d played it, she had probably been too far away from the unicorn for it to hear.
Slipping back outside, Claire moved several yards away and stood in the clearing where she’d seen the strands of mane. The storm had passed right by them, it seemed, but the air still felt heavy and full. Holding the flute to her lips, she thought, I wish.
Then letting all her most secret wishes and hopes gather up in her, she released her breath …
There was no sound. No movement anywhere that she could see.
Pulling the flute away, she let it dangle from her fingers. She should be used to disappointment by now, but it felt as fresh and new as ever. She crouched down to collect the new hairs of unicorn mane. They perfectly matched the knot in her pocket.
Are you really going to give up that easily?
The thought came to her in Sophie’s voice. It sounded so clear that she looked back at the tent to make sure Sophie wasn’t awake and talking to her.
The unicorn was right there, Sophie’s voice in her head admonished.
Looking down at the log, Claire noticed some leaves seemed to have been squished into the ground. Maybe that’s the direction the unicorn took. She could explore a little more before waking Sophie.
Claire yanked a sapphire from her dress. With the ragged end of the silk cloak, she began to polish. It wasn’t too bright, but it would be enough to weave through the trees.
But as she left her sleeping sister and the safety of the tent, she realized the trouble with light: it made everything beyond its sphere seem darker, made the place where she was seem small compared to where she was not. Dad always said knowledge was like that, too: that everything you learned in life helped you see how much more there was to know.
Claire looked down at the dim light in her hand, taking a few steps to the right. Was it her imagination or did the light seem stronger now? Moving left, she saw the sapphire dim. Heart pounding, she turned to the right again and began to walk quickly, trusting in her magic—trusting in all she did not yet know.
Every so often, she paused, seeing if there was a difference in the intensity of the light depending on which way she turned. She could hardly believe it, but it almost seemed like the light, the sapphire, was guiding her someplace.
When at last Claire reached another small slip of a waterfall that fed a tiny brook, she stopped and pulled the flute out again. Maybe this time …
Slipping the sapphire into her pocket, she again held the flute with both hands.
The wind rattled the nearby branches, sending a scattering of leaves to the earth, and she let her gaze travel up through the bare branches of the trees. At least she could now easily see the stars, and they blazed against the backdrop of night, looking not unlike the moontears. The moontears that needed the last unicorn to be woken. That needed her to call it, just as Arden’s heir had called the unicorn princess to him before. Stories repeat.
Keeping her gaze on the bright points of light, she raised the flute to her lips. And as she did, she almost missed the slight ripple of darkness in the spaces between.
Almost.
Her heart leaped as a piece of midnight seemed to detach itself from the sky. It hurtled toward her, a bone-freezing coldness stalking behind it.
Wraith.
CHAPTER
18
Claire’s breath turned to ice in her throat. She choked.
The creature landed on the ground, silent as shadows, long limbs folding as it absorbed the impact. Unable to yell a warning, unable to breathe, Claire watched as the monster slowly stood. Though slightly human in shape, all its limbs were too long to be human, and the misty blackness that rolled off it obscured its features. She had the sense that if she were to sink her fists into its cloak, her hands would push through, as though it were made of ink, until she hit the hard skeletal bone of the thing beneath.
Nearby, someone screamed. It sounded a little bit like Sophie, but in that moment, a thick darkness flooded all of Claire’s senses—her ears, eyes, nose, mouth. The cold wasn’t just the cold of a winter’s night or the cold of a northern ocean. It was the cold that belonged only to those alien, barren stretches of space.
It was a cold that wrapped. That suffocated. That dragged her under.
It was the cold of absolute fear …
And then, just as suddenly, the cold lifted.
“Claire! Claire! ” Sophie was calling her name, as if she’d said it many times before, and Claire was only now responding. She realized she was no longer standing, but was lying flat on her back, the leaves gently cushioning her.
I’m fine, Claire tried to say, but her tongue felt heavy, as if it had indeed turned to ice.
“What’s wrong with you?” Sophie asked, her voice sliding a scale up. Claire felt a slight pressure on her wrist as her sister took her pulse. Her sister’s fingers were deliciously warm after the extreme cold of the wraith. She tried to speak again. “Sophie?”
“Claire!”
Sophie’s thumb fell away as she threw herself around Claire, wrapping her into a feverish hug.
“What happened to the wraiths?” Claire managed to mumble.
Sophie pulled back, and Claire saw that her hair was wild, her eyes bloodshot. And abandoned next to her was a sword.
“Fireblood,” Sophie said, her voice strained. “Aquila must have done something to it, because as soon as I took it out of the tent and into the moonlight, it began to glow the same way the ReflecTent does. I followed your sapphire to the clearing. I saw you about to play the flute, and a wraith just came from the sky—out of nowhere! It was like it was in slow motion. It landed on you, knocking you to the ground. And then without thinking, I ran at it with Fireblood.”
“You
were in a swordfight with a wraith?” Claire asked, impressed.
Sophie looked a little embarrassed. “I think I surprised it. I kind of just poked it and it ran, like shadows before light. I don’t know why, exactly, but at least it’s gone and you’re … you’re …” She dragged the back of her hand across her nose.
“Sophie—are you crying?”
“No,” she said, sniffing. “Okay, fine. A little. Don’t do something like that again! What were you thinking, sneaking away like that?!”
“It was the unicorn,” Claire said, her words now sounding more shaded and whole, rather than two-dimensional as they had before. “He—or she!—was right near our tent. I found more of its mane, and thought I’d try to find it.” She sighed, remembering her hope.
Sophie was quiet, then said in a low, serious voice, “That was really brave of you, Clairina. I need to tell you something, though.” She stopped, seeming to gather her thoughts.
Claire was just about to prod, but a slight ripple in the darkness made the question die instantly on her tongue.
“Look,” she croaked. Sophie turned around just in time to see another ripple in the shadowy trees beyond the meadow.
And then another.
And another.
The wraith hadn’t left … it had returned. With more.
“RUN!”
Claire wasn’t sure who said it—Sophie or herself—but her feet were already pounding the ground. They streaked across the field.
“Where’s Fireblood?” Claire yelled.
“Behind,” Sophie said, her voice catching. “But there are too many!”
Claire pumped her legs faster, her muscles screaming in protest after so recently being frozen. Her skirts grew heavy with the meadow’s dew, slowing her down. But the forest wasn’t any better. Thin branches whipped Claire as she ran by, the trees seeming to grab for her. Each time her jeweled gown snagged, she fell a step behind.
Hoisting the fabric in her hands, Claire tried to rip away from stubborn bramble—but this time, she couldn’t free herself. She was stuck. Her breaths came as sharp and fast as her terrified thoughts. The thoughts that told her this time, there would be no escape.
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