Glint's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Three nights had passed since Glint set its foot in Meagan's palm. Glint slept in a cracked stone lantern on the sill, a weathered old thing with a skull carved under its roof and green moss in its seams. A candle stub burned inside it, and Glint curled there each night, warm and watchful. This night, something woke Glint. Not a sound. A smell. Witch-warmth, close and wrong, creeping at the glass. Glint's silver eyes snapped open. The blue fire under its feet flared bright. Beyond the window, a shape pressed against the dark. It pulsed with the same warmth Meagan's whole cottage carried. But this warmth came from outside the wards, uninvited. Glint's job was simple. Guard the keeper. Anything with magic that crept to her window was a threat until proven otherwise. Glint climbed from the lantern and bared its small teeth. Meagan slept in the next room. Glint would not wake her. A guardian handled threats itself. It curled its fingers into claws and crept up the sill, fire trailing blue behind each step. The shape fluttered. Wings. Glint lunged and caught it between both hands, ready to crush. Then it felt the thing beat soft against its palms. Small. Trembling. A moth, broad as Glint's two hands, wings gray with silver dust. The dust was the warmth. Witch-magic clung to it like pollen, gathered from some spell-garden far off. Glint held the moth to the candlelight and stared. Not a threat. A lost thing. Its wings were torn at one edge. It had flown to the only warm window it could find. Glint knew that hunger. Three nights ago, Glint had been the thing at the glass, dying, drawn to warmth it had no right to claim. Glint eased its grip. The moth sat in its cupped hands, wings opening and closing. Glint could kill it. A guardian cleared threats. But this was no threat, and Glint had almost broken it from fear instead of judgment. Glint made a choice. It carried the moth to the lantern and set it inside, near the candle. The moth crawled close to the flame and went still, soaking the heat. Glint settled on the sill to watch it, fire steady and blue. Behind Glint, a door creaked. Meagan stood in the dark, a candle in her ringed hand. She looked at the moth in the lantern, then at Glint guarding it. "You caught something," she said. "And you kept it alive." Glint looked up at her. It had learned the thing between friend and foe is a choice, not a claw. Meagan crouched and studied the moth's torn wing. "That dust isn't from my garden," she said. Her brow pulled tight. "Someone else is working witch-magic close by. Someone I don't know." Glint's fire sharpened. The threat was not the moth. The threat was whoever had sent it.