Solara Brightbloom's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

Solara walked the frozen path an hour before her hands began to shake. Yawen's ice held the shadow open ahead of her. But the cold that cut the dark also crept into her skin. Each step drank her warmth. Her light, once bright as noon, had shrunk to a dull glow at her fingertips. She stopped and leaned against a black trunk. Her breath came white. She had come to carry the sun to the heart-tree. Now the sun inside her was going out. Yawen turned back. Frost spread where he stood. "You've slowed," he said. No worry in it. Just a fact. "Your cold is taking my warmth," Solara said. "If it keeps on, I won't reach the tree. I'll be too weak to heal anything." He studied her the way winter studies a candle. "I can't stop being cold." "I know." She pressed her palm to her chest and felt how faint the heat had grown. She thought of her light like a fire in a windy field. It needed shelter, not more fuel. "Then I stop giving it away." She knelt on the ice. She stopped pushing her light outward to fight the dark. Instead she pulled it inward, close to her heart, and let it burn small and hot. She wrapped it in herself like hands around a coal. The glow at her skin dimmed to almost nothing. She looked snuffed out. "You've gone dark," Yawen said. His flat voice held a crack of something. Doubt, maybe. "That was your only defense." "Watch." Solara held still. The cold pressed on her from every side. But it found no open flame to feed on now. It slid over the shell she had made and could not reach the fire beneath. Slowly, the shaking in her hands eased. Her breath warmed. The heat did not grow, but it stopped bleeding away. She stood. She was not the sunshine she had been. She was a covered lamp in a cold house. But she was steady. "I can walk now," she said. "As far as we need." Yawen looked at her for a long moment. "You'll be harder to see," he said. "The shadow finds bright things first." He turned and cut the path forward again. Solara followed. Her warmth was safe, but her light no longer pushed the dark back. She had traded her glow for her strength. Now the blight pressed closer on both sides, and she carried no lamp to hold it off. Somewhere ahead the heart-tree waited. She would have to reach it before the shadow reached her.