Luna Brightwell's Arc

Chapter 2 of 6

The survivors slept in the mansion's great hall that first night, and by dawn Luna could see her own breath. Frost coated the inside of the windows. An old man near the door shook under two blankets. The stone walls held the cold like a tomb. There was no stove, no wood, no fire anywhere in the house. Luna knew what deep cold did to tired bodies. If she found no heat by dark, someone would not wake up. She searched every room. In a back parlor she found an iron display bolted to the wall, medals mounted on frost-softened ribbons. The metal was tarnished, the edges rimmed white. It was the only thing in the house that spoke of soldiers like her. She left it and kept moving. She needed fuel, not memories. A voice came from the doorway. "You claimed a stone box. Stone doesn't burn." Luna turned. A woman stood there in dented gold armor, planets inked across her arms. Her hair moved like real flame, throwing orange light across the wall. Luna had met her once during the war, on a command line, before the woman's mother died and left her a rank she never wanted. Stella. A princess who fought and worried in equal measure. "You came," Luna said. "I heard you took in survivors." Stella stepped inside. "I have men who froze in the field. I won't watch it again." "I have no wood," Luna said. "No coal. The council left us nothing." Stella looked at the cold hearth. Then she looked at her own hair. "I burn," she said. "But I can't hold a whole house warm. I'd go out by morning." Luna's mind moved fast, the way it had when she patched wounds with no healer near. Heat needed to be trapped, not just made. "We stop chasing the whole house," she said. "We pick one room. The small parlor. We seal it." They worked through the afternoon. Luna tore blankets and stuffed them into cracks. Stella pressed her burning hands to the old iron grate until it glowed. The survivors dragged mattresses into the sealed room. Luna packed everyone shoulder to shoulder, bodies sharing warmth the way she'd learned in ditches. At dusk something scratched at the parlor window. A small pink dragon crouched on the sill, gold specks across its scales. It shivered and pawed the glass. Luna opened the window and it darted inside, curling on the warm grate. Heat rolled off its little body and filled the room. The old man stopped shaking. He laughed for the first time in days. By midnight the parlor held its heat. Everyone lived. But Luna sat awake, counting. One warm room could hold thirty people for one night. She had sixty survivors and a winter ahead. The dragon and the fire-haired princess had bought her tonight. Tomorrow she needed a real source of heat, and a way to feed it that wouldn't leave.