Midnight Frost

at midnight, preferably in the middle of a hard frost.”
    “Well, at least we have the frost,” I muttered.
    The temperature had been steadily dropping all night long. The lower it went, the more the frost gathered on the rocks and crumbled walls. Now, the entire courtyard looked like a sheet of silver ice—cold and beautiful—although the flowers remained strangely untouched by the gathering frost, as though this were a summer night instead of the dead of winter.
    We waited as the minutes slowly ticked by, our breath steaming in the air and then falling away to the ground in clouds of ice crystals. For the longest time, the ambrosia flowers didn’t do anything but shiver in the cold like the rest of us.
    “One minute until midnight,” Oliver announced, peering at his phone, the white glow lighting up his face like a ghost’s.
    We all stared at the flowers, watching for any change, for any sign that they would do whatever they were supposed to, what Nickamedes needed them to do.
    And slowly—very, very slowly—the flowers began to grow.
    At first, I thought it was just my imagination. But I blinked and then blinked again, and I realized that they were actually . . . moving .
    Three small, individual flowers seemed to stretch toward each other, as though the petals were somehow being pulled together by the silvery glow of the full moon so very high above.
    “Is everyone else seeing this?” I asked.
    “Sshh,” Oliver said. “You’re spoiling the moment.”
    I elbowed him in the side, and he grinned. Then, we both fixed our gazes on the flowers once more.
    As soon as the petals of the three flowers touched each other, they all seemed to wilt, as though they couldn’t stand to be that close together. I sucked in a breath, wondering if something was wrong, if they weren’t going to bloom because we were here and we needed them so badly. But as soon as the flowers wilted, a silver light began to burn in the center of each one of them, and the purple and gray streaks on the petals burst into cold flames. For a moment, the colors swirled together, a starry mix of silver, purple, and gray that grew brighter and brighter until I had to close my eyes and look away from the intense light. Then, as quickly as it had begun, the colors and lights abruptly faded away.
    I opened my eyes—and was amazed at what I saw.
    Somehow, the three small flowers had fused together into one large, beautiful blossom. The petals were now a shimmering silver and had a vaguely metallic look to them, almost as if they would ring like a bell if you tapped on them with your fingernail. White, purple, and gray streaked down the petals, as well, the colors clustered together like they were one stripe. It was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.
    Nobody spoke for several moments.
    “It’s incredible,” Daphne finally whispered.
    “That it is,” Covington said, a strange, almost envious note in his voice. “That it is.”
    We all fell silent again.
    “Well,” I said, stepping forward and carefully tugging the flower—vine and all—free of the rock wall and the gryphon’s beak. “I don’t care how beautiful it is. All that matters is that it did what it was supposed to. Now we can use it to help Nickamedes.”
    “Of course,” Covington said. “Of course.”
    I carefully slid the ambrosia flower into a long, slender, plastic tube that Ajax had bought when we’d gone shopping for supplies yesterday. Hopefully, the tube would protect the flower so we could get it back to the academy in one piece.
    “Now what?” Rory asked.
    “We get some sleep,” Ajax rumbled. “It’s been a long day, and we still have to hike back down the mountain in the morning.”
    We all headed back over to our camp. Ajax added enough wood to the fire so that it would burn through the rest of the night, while everyone else slipped into their tents and sleeping bags.
    Half an hour later, I was in a tent with Daphne. Rachel and Rory would also sleep in here with us later, after they took their turns standing watch. I scooted closer to Daphne for warmth, despite the fact that she was already snoring. Every once in a while, a pink spark of magic would escape from her sleeping bag and flicker up into the air like a firefly before winking out.
    I zipped up my sleeping bag, making sure I had one hand on Vic and the other on the tube with the ambrosia flower. The sword’s eye opened, and he regarded me with a serious expression. Vic had been