Nettle placed her hands around it, working her magic into the lock. She grit her teeth, summoning her glow. It was like trying to light damp tinder.
“Easy does it, Firebug,” Silver murmured. “We’re not in a rush.”
Her wings drooped, despite his reassurance. “And if I can’t unlock it?”
He shrugged, and flashed that tusked smile at her. “We break it down.”
Nettle couldn’t help but smile back a little. She doubted her Fey Court would look kindly upon it if they learned she vandalized the sacred spring, but she appreciated his vote of confidence all the same.
It took several more moments to summon her magic, but like stagnant blood into cold hands, finally it came. Leaves of mistletoe, in the palest of greens, unfurled inside the lock.
A heavy grinding noise came, stone against stone as the magic worked, and the shape of the door pushed out from the wall.
It should have kept opening, but like last time, the door stopped.
This was as much as she’d accomplished the previous time she had reached this far, but it hadn’t been enough. Even though this was the whole point of bringing someone else along, she couldn’t help but feel she had failed again.
“That’s my girl,” Silver said, even as her wings drooped again. His words wicked off her like water on duck feathers. He stepped forward and grabbed the stone door.
A mean thought pierced her for a moment, as he pushed and readjusted his hands on it, that he wouldn’t be able to open the door either. She didn’t truly want it, but maybe it would have made her feel better about failing.
But Silver’s sheer muscle succeeded where her magic had not. A shiver ran up her skin as the entire wall at the end of the tunnel shifted, a mechanism taking the weight of it and rolling into an underground pocket. Silver looked to Nettle with a grin, and gestured for her to go in. She felt an overwhelming swell of gratitude.
The spring was just as she’d been told. The cavern was large, the ceiling obscured by a swath of hanging roots and vines. They were deep under the Whispering Woods, close to the heart of the Chasm. A few stray beams of light shone through the mass, the largest of them highlighting the spring on the far end of the chamber, shining on the Fey Spring. Small rivulets of water glimmered as they ran down a raw amethyst wall, gathering in a carved basin below.
She looked back at Silver, ducking through the low door behind her, watched his face as he looked around, taking the scattered piles and chests of gold doubloons, bejeweled rings and crowns spilling out across the ornate stone floor, carved in the same style as the gauntlet leading to it.
She flitted down the path, landing just on the edge of the basin. Nettle tucked her wings in. Her heart beat rapidly.
This was it, everything she had been waiting for. Finally, she could stop worrying about what was wrong with her. She would glow again.
Nettle scooped up a handful of the water, drank it, and waited.
And waited.
“It’s not working. It’s not... it didn’t fix me.” Her voice choked on the words.
She hadn’t found what she had wanted out in the world. She couldn’t go back, and she couldn’t move forward. Maybe when she first set out on this pointless quest, she’d wanted adventure and new experiences, only to discover she wasn’t built for them.
All of this had been for nothing.
Silver’s footsteps echoed off the cavern walls, the crackle of gold under boot. With every passing heartbeat, she felt smaller, less.
“Nettle, what can I do?”
“Go. Take your treasure. Your job is done.”
“Nettle…”
“I saidgo.”
He stayed.
“You can’t help me. I should have done this alone. But…it’s all too much for me. I can’t get anything right out here,” Nettle said, her voice wobbling over every word, sobs threatening to break past the dam in her chest. She was truly nothing without her glow. She couldn’t even speak right.
“C’mon, Firebug. We got this far, haven’t we?”
He took another step forward, his expression soft and full of concern, trained on her.
