Briar Thorne's Arc

Chapter 7 of 11

Celestine's light had shrunk to a thread. Briar knelt by the center stone and watched the spirit flicker. The lantern sat calm in its ring of flowers now, but calm was not enough. The same cold that dimmed Celestine had put the whole garden to sleep once. If Briar did not learn what caused it, that cold would take the last blooms and Celestine with them. "Tell me how it started," she said. "The first sleep. What put the garden down?" Celestine's mouth opened, then shut. "I do not remember," she whispered. "I was here. Then I was not. Then the flowers were frozen." Her form thinned. "There was a place. Below. Where I lived. Look there." Briar left the garden and climbed down the slope. She found the ruin near a stand of dead pines. A cabin, half fallen. The roof had caved on one side. Vines crept through the broken windows. She pushed through the doorway. Snow had drifted across a rotted floor. Under a collapsed shelf she saw a corner of leather. She pulled it free. A journal, its pages swollen with old water. Gilt letters on the cover spelled Celestine. Briar wiped the frost away and opened it. Most pages had bled to gray. But near the end, one entry held. The ink was faint but readable. Briar read it twice, and her chest went tight. The princess had written it herself. She had begged the moon-and-ice goddess to stop time in the garden. She had wanted the blooms to last forever, so her prison would stay beautiful. The goddess loved her and could not refuse. She froze the garden whole. But the spell held the flowers too hard. It did not preserve them. It put them to sleep and would not let them wake. Celestine died soon after. She never knew her own wish had done it. Briar carried the journal back up the slope. The climb tore at her hands. She reached the stone and dropped beside the fading spirit. "You asked her to stop time," Briar said. "That is what froze the garden. Not a curse. A gift that held too tight." Celestine's eyes opened. For a long moment she did not speak. "I did this," she said. Her voice cracked. "I locked them, like he locked me." "Then we undo it the same way," Briar said. "Not with more cold. With warmth that lets go." She understood now. The frozen sleep was not a wound to fight. It was a hold to release. The goddess's fire, the fox's warmth, all of it had to loosen the spell, not just melt the ice. Celestine's light steadied a little, fed by the truth. "Wake them," she said. "For me. And for her." Briar closed the journal. She knew the cause at last. But knowing it meant she would have to face the goddess who cast the spell, and ask her to break the one gift she ever gave the woman she loved.