Luna Brightwood's Arc

Chapter 15 of 22

Silvain's warning still hung in the air when Luna heard the first branch snap at the tree line. Not a beast. A man's step, quick and sure. The cloaked figure was coming through the trees on foot, and he was closer than he had any right to be. The field they stood in had no walls, no ditch, no cover but the low grass and the hut behind them. The hut held eight small unicorns she would not leave. "He's early," Silvain said. He drew his sword. The blade lit before it cleared the sheath, a straight beam of white and gold that pushed the shadow off the grass. "He wants us in the open." Luna turned once, fast, and made herself see the field the way a photographer sees a frame. Grass. Hut. Tree line on three sides. No rocks. No ridge. The gold dragon was still climbing back from burning the sky trap, too far to reach them in time. Her hands were empty. Her camera hung at her hip. She had no wall to put her back against. Then the fairy dropped out of the branches above the hut. Lumina Dewsparkle landed on Luna's shoulder, breathing hard, and pressed something cold into her palm. A hand mirror, cracked into wedges, each shard holding a slice of green and pink light. "Hold it up when he clears the trees," the fairy said. "It throws back what he brings. Only once. Then it is glass." The cloaked man stepped out of the pines. His hood was low. The red trim caught the sword's light and pulled Luna's eye down to his hands. One hand was already raised. "Give me the card," he said. "Then the boy lowers the sword." His voice was flat, closed. Behind him, two horned beasts slid out of the trees and stopped at his heel. Luna lifted the mirror. She did not aim it at him. She aimed it at the sword. The blade's light struck the shards and split, and every wedge threw a lance of white back across the field. The beasts flinched and dropped. The cloaked man turned his face away, one step, two, and in that step Silvain closed the distance and set the point of the sword under the edge of the hood. A long white shape poured down out of the sky behind them, gold-horned, silver-scaled, and coiled once around the hut like a wall. "Walk back," Silvain said. "Now." The cloaked man walked back. He did not run. At the tree line he stopped and looked at Luna over the sword. "The owl will not land," he said, and then the pines took him. The mirror in Luna's hand went dull, the colors gone, the shards only glass. She closed her fingers around it. The field was hers for the moment. The card was still in the sky, and now she knew he had sent something after it.