Three days before the flower festival, Rosewing had no bloom to enter. Every other fairy in Midwiddleton had a signature flower. She had a garden of ordinary daisies and a wish to win Fairy of the Year. She pulled ivy from her hair and tied it around a wilting stem, hoping to fix it. The stem drooped anyway. The judges wouldn't even look at her. She knew it. A common flower meant a common fairy, and common fairies went home empty-handed. A shadow crossed her petal-shaped cottage. Mystique landed on the front step, careful not to touch the moss. She was Rosewing's rival, and she had won last year. Her navy dress shimmered as she flicked one white nail toward Rosewing's daisies. "Still growing weeds?" Mystique said. She smiled without warmth. "I've bred a black orchid nobody can copy. You should save yourself the shame and stay home." Rosewing's cheeks burned. But she looked past Mystique, at the wild hedges beyond her garden. An idea hit her hard. "I don't need to copy you," Rosewing said. "I'll make something new." Mystique laughed and flew off. Rosewing didn't wait. She flew to the wildest corner of her garden, where two flowers she loved grew side by side. A pale pink rose and a deep violet bell. Nobody had ever crossed them. If she could, the bloom would be hers alone. But pollen wouldn't move itself. She needed a pollinator, and not a common one. She remembered the rare bee her grandmother once described. A bee with a pink and purple body and glowing blue eyes, drawn only to the sweetest nectar. Rosewing worked all afternoon. She squeezed nectar from both flowers into a single cup and set it between the rose and the bell. Then she waited. The sun dropped low. Her wings ached. At dusk, a soft hum reached her ears. The rare bee floated down, its blue eyes bright in the fading light. It drank from her cup. Then it drifted to the rose, dusted itself gold, and crossed to the violet bell. Rosewing held her breath and did not move. The bee worked both flowers, back and forth, until its legs glowed with mixed pollen. Then it lifted away into the dark. Rosewing marked the crossed bell with a strand of ivy and flew inside, heart pounding. By morning, a bud had formed on the marked stem. It was unlike any flower in Midwiddleton. Pink at the base, deep violet at the tip, with a faint shimmer along each petal. Her own hybrid. Her signature bloom. Rosewing cupped it in both hands and grinned. Now the judges would have to look at her. But the bud was still closed. The festival was two days away, and no hybrid this young had ever bloomed in time. She had made her flower. Now she had to make it open.

The pot glowed now, but the sun still hung above the sill. Rosewing knew what Mystique meant. Judging began the moment sunlight cleared the window. By then the dusk would be gone. Her woven pot fed on that last soft light. In full dark, the shimmer might die, and the judges would see only dark strands and plain soil. She pressed her thumb to the crooked seam and watched the glow already thinning at the edges. Threadwick came back with a tape still hanging from his apron. He looked at the sky, then at the pot, and saw the problem before she said it. "It's fading," he said. "The paint only wakes at dusk. Once it's dark it goes to sleep." He crouched under the table. "I need light. The right kind." "There's no dusk left to give it," Rosewing said. "Then I make dusk." He pulled a coil of thin wire and a jar from his apron. Inside the jar was the same ground moonrock, mixed thicker. "I paint a strip. I string it above your bloom. Angle it down. The pot won't glow on its own much longer. But if I shine steady light on it, it throws the sparkle back." He worked fast, wrapping wire, brushing the strip. "Same trick as a window. It doesn't matter where the light comes from, only that it hits." Rosewing held the wire steady while he tied it to the stand. The bloom rose between them, pink and violet against the dark vessel. Her hands shook. "If this fails, I have nothing to show." "It won't fail." He didn't look up. "I ran out of time on the seam. I'm not running out on this." The sun slid down. Its last edge touched the sill, then cleared it. Across the hall a bell rang. Judging had begun. The natural dusk winked out, and Rosewing's stomach dropped as the pot dimmed to plain black. Threadwick angled his painted strip. It caught the hall's fairy lights and threw a soft blue wash straight onto the vessel. The sparkles woke again. Blue and purple sparks lit across the woven strands, and the whole pot shimmered as if the dusk had never left. The bloom sat inside a pool of starlight. Magistrate Thornbloom stopped at the table. She lowered her glasses and looked a long moment. "This one holds," she said. "The others faded when the sun did." She wrote something short, then moved on. Rosewing let out her breath. Mystique stood two tables away, her display gone dull in the dark. Her lashes lowered, her smile gone. Threadwick tied off the last knot. "Told you." Rosewing looked at the glow, then at him. Her entry led the row now. But the judges were still walking, still weighing. The title was not won yet, and the night had only begun.

The glow held. Rosewing's bloom sat inside its pool of blue light while the judges finished their walk. Mystique watched her own display sit dull and dark two tables away. Her petals had faded when the sun cleared the sill, and nothing woke them again. Rosewing saw the moment her rival understood she had lost. Mystique stepped away from her table. She crossed the hall fast, false nails flashing, and stopped in front of the judges' stand. "I demand a rematch," she said. Her voice carried over the whole room. "Pure blooms only. No pots. No tricks. No woven covers or painted wire." She pointed a nail at Rosewing. "She only won because of that boy's gadgets." The hall went quiet. Fairies turned. Magistrate Thornbloom lowered her glasses and looked at Mystique the way she might look at a wilted stem. "The rules are set," Thornbloom said. "You knew them when you entered. Display counts. It always has." She did not raise her voice. "You spread rumors. You reached for frost. Now you want the contest changed because you lost it fairly." Mystique's mouth opened. No answer came. A few fairies near the front laughed behind their hands. The sound spread. Mystique's purple cheeks went darker. She had spent the whole festival looking down at everyone, and now the room looked down at her. She turned, shoved through the crowd, and ran out the tall doors into the dark. Thornbloom watched the doors swing shut. Then she lifted the gleaming trophy from its stand, the one wound with real flowers, engraved fairy of the year. "The ruling stands," she said. "This entry held its light when every other faded. That is craft. That is nerve." She looked straight at Rosewing. "The title is yours." The hall broke into cheers. Fairy lights swung. Rosewing stood frozen, her hands still pressed to the crooked seam of the pot her grandmother would have loved. Two years running. No one had done it in sixty years. She thought of the old fairy who taught her which blooms to trust, and her throat went tight. Threadwick reached her first. He had wire still looped around one wrist. "You did it," he said. "I only held the light. You grew the thing." "You made the light," she said. "You made all of it." He shook his head, then stopped shaking it. He looked at her the way he looked at a seam he could not walk away from. "I ran out of time on a lot of things," he said. "Not this." He leaned in, and she rose to meet him, and their lips touched under the swinging lights. When they parted, the trophy waited on the stand with her name about to be carved beneath the rim. Rosewing had the title. But Mystique had run into the night, shamed and furious, and a fairy like that did not lose quietly for long.