Fire in the Star by Kamilla Benko

Author:Kamilla Benko
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

CHAPTER

17

Fifteen minutes and one self-boiling kettle later, Claire found herself sitting cross-legged on the edge of the blanket, holding a bit of cheese in her hand. Beside her, Nett was busy unwrapping the last of the biscuits while Thorn—returned to his usual blond-haired state—sat quietly across from Claire, occasionally sneaking a glance at Sophie. Seated next to Claire, Sophie was in the middle of recapping just exactly how a golden gauntlet had come to clamp onto Sena’s hand.

“So,” Sophie said with a toss of her white-streaked ponytail, “we asked ourselves, ‘Where would the Forgers hide something as rare and precious as a unicorn?’ And that’s when Nett suggested—”

“The Fyrton Vaults,” Nett supplied.

Sophie shook her head emphatically. “Right. Because—”

“Because the Fyrton Vaults are the most secure place in all of Arden,” Nett interrupted again as he reached for the kettle and poured in a packet of dried leaves. Immediately, the smell of new sketchbooks and sunshine filled the space. “They’re hard to break into, and even harder to break out of, and full of dangerous decoy objects to protect the real treasures. They’re a perfect place to hide something you don’t want others to know about.”

“Excuse me.” Sophie raised an eyebrow. “Who’s telling the story?!”

“Sorry,” Nett said, sounding cheerful and not sorry at all as he poured the newly made tea into silver goblets and handed them around. Claire hid her smile behind the rim as she accepted hers.

“Go on, Sophie,” she nudged. “What happened? How were you able to break into the treasury if it was unbreakable?”

Sophie’s eyes darted to Thorn, who at that very moment had been staring at her. Quickly, he turned away, reached for the tin of walnuts—and promptly knocked them over onto the blanket. As he was scrambling, Sophie looked at Claire meaningfully.

“I have my ways.”

Right. Ways. Unicorn ways.

One of the many magical abilities of unicorns was that they could open doors—any doors, including, it seemed, the ones set with the strongest of Forger locks.

“So we go inside,” Sophie continued, ignoring the plink of walnuts as Thorn dropped them back into the tin. “But instead of finding a unicorn, all we found were piles of treasures. Mountains of it. And oh, Claire!” Sophie’s eyes shined as she clasped her hands dramatically to her heart. “I wish you could have seen it. Some of those rooms—they looked like the illustrations from the storybook about Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves! Or the underground fairy world from the ‘Twelve Dancing Princesses.’ We saw golden tree branches with sapphire plums. Actual gold and actual sapphires!”

As Sophie continued to describe the many magical and fantastic things stowed in Fyrton’s vaults, Claire felt memories settle around the picnic blanket. This felt just like all those times before, when Sophie had outlined which Experience they were about to do next. But those stories had all been carved from Sophie’s imagination, and what her sister was describing now—a waterfall of steaming silver; gowns of woven platinum—was real. Sophie had actually seen and done what she was describing; these weren’t just descriptions of a wish.

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