Briar Thorne's Arc

Chapter 6 of 11

The chill spread faster than Briar could work. The frozen lantern threw its false cold across the garden, and the pink blossoms she had just woken drooped under new frost. She grabbed the lantern to move it, but the smoke inside pushed harder, colder. Wherever she set it, the chill crept toward the planters. She could keep the beast away or keep the flowers alive. Not both. She knelt by the center stone, where the unicorn strand held Celestine's spirit in place. "Your goddess made this lantern," Briar said. "But it's killing the garden. How do I calm it?" The spirit rose from the stone. Celestine's red dress glimmered with snow. Her black hair hung still in the cold air. She was thinner than before, her edges pale as breath on glass. She looked at the lantern, then at the frosted blossoms, and her face tightened. "Her fire," Celestine said. Her voice came faint and slow. "Cold. Like she was. Before me." She pressed a hand to her chest, gathering strength. "It burns... alone. It only knows how to push away." "Then how do I stop it pushing?" Briar asked. Celestine drifted toward the lantern. The smoke leaned toward her, the way frost leans toward warmth. "Give it what I gave her," she said. "A reason to stay near." Briar did not understand. Then she saw the spirit reach for the pink blossoms nearest the wall. Celestine plucked one, a full flower rimmed in white. She held it against the frosted glass. "These grew for her," Celestine said. "She named them once." Her hand shook. "Put them at its feet. The cold remembers being loved. It will not spread past what she cares for." Briar gathered the pink blossoms, the ones already lost to the fresh frost. She laid them in a ring around the base of the lantern. Their petals stiffened, then held. The violet smoke slowed. Its churning eased. The chill drew back into a tight circle, tight around the flowers, no wider. Briar touched the stone wall past the ring. The frost there had stopped. The garden's warmth crept back. The blossoms she thought dead loosened, then lifted. But the effort cost Celestine. The spirit sank toward the stone, her light gone thin as a candle's last thread. "That is all I know," she said. "I cannot... give more." Her form flickered. The snow on her dress dimmed. "Wait," Briar said. "Stay with me." "The strand holds me," Celestine whispered. "But barely now." Her eyes closed. "Wake them before I fade. I want to see it once." The lantern sat calm in its ring of flowers. The beast would keep its distance, and the garden could thaw at last. But Celestine's light had dropped to almost nothing. Briar had won the season and the safety she needed. She had also learned the spirit who guided her had run out of time.