Page 23 of Thornlight

Thorn’s breath caught. She’d never seen one in person. Rimmed with thick, rippled glass, the eldisks crackled quietly in response to the soldiers’ bindrock-plated gloves. Small antsy limbs of captured lightning broke through both metal and glass, curled around the soldiers’ gloved fingers, then retreated.

Thorn’s own plated gloves—Brier’sgloves—hissed in response. The hair on her arms snapped to attention.

The soldiers waited; the captain’s fist remained clenched. Thorn, hardly breathing, watched Bartos scan the Break with narrowed eyes.

The rumbling Break stilled, as did the wet black groundaround it—but the hot stink remained. Thorn breathed thinly through her nose.

The captain lowered his fist. Then he jerked his head at the wooden bridge that stretched across the Break. This crossing was at one of the Break’s narrower points.

Bartos had told her quietly the day before, as they inched down the cliffs, that the remaining bridges over the Break wouldn’t last long. They might snap in two during a battle with the Gulgot’s darkness, or some slimy dark creature that obeyed the Gulgot’s command might reach up and drag a bridge down—maybe even while soldiers were traveling on it.

Or a bridgeitselfmight decide to fall.

Thorn remembered her parents’ letters:You can’t trust anything in Estar now.

“Forward,” commanded the captain.

But when Noro tried to follow orders, Thorn tugged hard on his mane. He hesitated, blowing out an undignified snort.

Behind her, one of the other guards grunted—a slim woman with pale freckled skin and short white hair. “Move, girl,” she said.

“Leave her be, eh?” said Bartos, his voice light but his eyes flinty. “She’s just scared.”

The woman’s frown deepened. “I thought she was supposed to be some fearless lightning girl.”

“And I thought you were an adult,” Noro said smoothly, “and she a child.”

Not even this hard-faced woman could bear a unicorn’s scolding. She looked away, her cheeks reddening.

Thorn hunched her shoulders and let Noro carry her across the bridge into darkness.

They made camp for the night in a flat stony clearing.

Shallow swamplands surrounded them, smelling like dirty socks that had been soaked in eggs gone rotten. Thick blankets of bright green algae choked the black water. Clumps of white moss wriggled with maggots. Mist shrouded the bulbous trees. Their drooping branches disappeared into the swamp, knotted and leafless.

It was night, according to Bartos, but Thorn’s parents had told her there wasn’t much difference, in Estar.

Day was dark; night was darker.

Thorn perched on a flat boulder, staring at the bubbling swamp.

The shadows of Estar were heavier than the shadows ofWestlin. They seemed like things of substance—crops you could pluck from the ground, or cloaks you could drape around your shoulders.

Or creatures lying in wait. Creatures that could wrap their fingers around you andtug.

Thorn drew her knees to her chest. She decided to ignore the shadows for now, or at least try to.

Instead she looked for lights.

In the distance—two miles away, Bartos had said—amber lights flickered. Candles, lanterns, torches. It was the war front, where the soldiers of the Vale camped. Armed with eldisks, they patrolled the Break that divided the dark ruin of Estar from the high green cliffs of Westlin. They peered down into the Break’s endless darkness and shot lightning at anything that moved.

Thorn’s parents were among them.

“We can visit them, if you’d like,” said Noro. He nibbled at the fuzzy pink lichens lining Thorn’s boulder. “I can run faster than any of these warhorses.”

“And then what?” Thorn’s eyes watered from the smelly sludge crusting her boots. She wondered which of the lights belonged to her parents. The brightest ones, she hoped. “Wecan’t hide from the queen forever. We have to make it home, with all the lightning she asked for. Somehow.”

“It was only a suggestion.”

---