Luna Brightwell's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

The second night broke Stella. Luna watched her kneel by the grate, hands out, flame pouring from her hair. But the fire ran low now. Stella's shoulders shook. Sweat froze on her forehead. She had burned through two nights with barely any rest. Luna knew the look. She had seen soldiers push past empty and drop where they stood. "Stop," Luna said. "You'll collapse." "If I stop, they freeze." Stella did not look up. "My men froze in the field. I counted them after. I won't count again." The dragon slept curled on the warm iron, its heat fading with the fire. Thirty people breathed in the sealed room. Luna's mind moved the way it had in war, when she stitched wounds with no healer and no time. Heat had to come from something that didn't tire. Not a person. Not magic alone. She remembered the flowers. Deep in the mansion sat a frost-crowned vault, sealed with a family crest. Luna had passed it while searching for fuel. Behind its iced door she had glimpsed a cluster of blue and gold blooms, petals glowing faint and steady. She had thought them decoration. Now she thought of the steady light. Steady meant lasting. Luna ran to the vault and pressed her hands to the frozen door. It would not move. "Stella," she called. "I need your fire. One last push." Stella came, staggering. She pressed her palms to the ice. Flame licked the crest. The frost cracked and slid away. The door groaned open. Inside, the glowing flowers sat in a shallow bowl of dark soil. Warmth rolled off them, soft and even, like sun on stone. Luna lifted the bowl. The heat did not fade in her hands. It held. "They don't burn out," Luna said. "They just glow. Warm and slow." Stella touched one petal. Her fire dimmed to embers, and for once she let it. "How much heat?" "Enough for one room. Steady. No fuel." Luna set the bowl by the sleeping survivors. The old man near the wall sighed and eased in his sleep. But Luna counted, the way she always did. One bowl warmed one room. She had two more rooms of people at the other house, and only these flowers here. "We can't split thirty people's warmth three ways," she said. Stella sat back against the vault, finally resting. "Then you need more of these." Luna held the bowl and felt the steady heat. The blooms had grown in a sealed vault, in ice, for years. Someone had kept them alive. Someone knew how. She looked at the crest on the broken door, a coat of arms she did not know. Tonight no one would freeze. But by morning she needed to learn where these flowers came from, and whether anyone left alive could grow more before the deep winter closed the roads.