Luna Brightwood's Arc

Chapter 21 of 22

Luna kept her palm on the dome for a long moment. The eight small unicorns slept on the porch in a heap. Her camera case sat by the stone. She turned to Silvain. "The card is still in the camera. No one has seen the pictures. If he catches up before we send them, none of this matters." Silvain nodded once. "Then we send them now." Silvana knelt by the case and unbuckled it. "There's a photo lab past the ridge, an hour on foot. I've been there. The owner develops for the fairy court." She looked up. "He can pull the card and print. Once prints exist, the pictures exist." Luna lifted the camera out. The lens caught the low light and threw a green spark across her wrist. Her hands shook a little. She hadn't eaten since dawn. "We can't all go," Silvain said. "The wyrm stays with the unicorns. I stay with the wyrm. He'll come for the dome the second I leave it." He looked at Silvana. "You know the path. Take her." Silvana stood. She checked the trees behind them, then the sky. "He's still asleep. The lily bought us until sunrise. Maybe less." A few pink petals still clung to her sleeve from the fairy's last bloom. She brushed them off. They moved. Silvana went first along a deer track through pine and low fern. Luna kept the camera against her chest inside the padded case, one hand on the strap, one free. Twice Silvana stopped and raised a fist and they crouched. Once for a shadow that turned out to be a fox. Once for nothing they could see. The second time Silvana whispered, "Keep going. Don't run. Running makes noise." The ridge dropped into a shallow cut in the woods. A small shop sat at the bottom, windows lit, camera bodies and film boxes stacked behind the glass. A painted sign read PHOTO STUDIO. Silvana knocked twice, paused, knocked once. The door opened a hand's width. An older man in an apron looked past them at the trees, then stepped back and let them in. Luna set the camera on the counter and pulled the card. "All of it," she said. "Every frame. As many prints as you can make. Fast." He took the card without a word and went through a curtain to the back. Luna heard water, then a fan. Silvana stood at the window with her back to the glass. Minutes passed. The man returned with a stack of wet prints between two boards. The cloaked man's face stared up from the top sheet, red trim, collared beast at his heel. "Six sets," he said. "I'll send four by runner tonight. Court, guard, north watch, the fairy." He slid two sets to Luna. "These are yours." Luna held the prints against her chest. The warning was out of her hands now. Outside, above the pines, a thin line of smoke rose from the direction of the clearing. Silvana saw it too. "He's awake," she said. "And he knows where Silvain is."