Page 3 of Thornlight

But still, Thorn waved. She smiled until her cheeks hurt. She didn’t blink, for then her embarrassed tears would fall. In general, she was terrible at holding back tears, but that didn’t mean she would stop trying.

They turned onto the tiny grassy path that led to their home on the edge of Aeria. Rain clung to the willow trees lining thepath; mist lined every patch of yellow-flowered clover.

“I love you,” Mazby whispered, hidden inside Thorn’s coat. He was the only one Thorn talked to about how little she thought of herself. “I think you’re wonderful. I like the way you smell. You’re the best friend a grifflet could ask for.” He butted his head beneath her ear. “You excel at finding the truly quality trash. You’re also good at making Master Tuwain angry, which is fun to watch.”

That, finally, made Thorn laugh, just as Noro brought them to the red front door of the Skystone family’s tiny yellow cottage. It was called Flower House, so named for the profusion of flowers that surrounded it—foxgloves and hydrangeas, heliotropes and blue-speckled violets.

The flowers were Thorn’s; the name was Brier’s.

Noro’s cold blue-purple eyes narrowed as Thorn dismounted. “Every day I hope that you’ll come to your senses and send that vermin up north, where he belongs.”

“The word is ‘grifflet,’” Mazby corrected, scrambling atop Thorn’s cap so he could glare up at Noro. “Or does yourbrilliantunicorn brain have trouble with words?”

“Grifflet. Vermin.” Noro tilted his slim white head. “Doesn’t seem to be much difference to me.”

Every feather on Mazby’s kitten-sized body poofed inrighteous fury. “Careful, horsey. I’d hate to have to claw up that pretty coat.”

“Just as I’d hate to have to put my horn through your tiny rat’s heart,” Noro said smoothly.

Brier dismounted and whirled on them. “Enough!”

Everyone fell silent. Thorn realized that Brier, who only a little while ago had been beaming, now looked ashen and exhausted, her eyes watery and red.

All the blood in Thorn’s body at once ran slower and hotter.

“Brier, what’s wrong?” she asked.

Brier shook her head fiercely, entered the cottage, and hurried through the kitchen to the sunroom at the back of the house. The sunroom was built of green-tinted glass, and though it never got very sunny—nowhere in Westlin ever got very sunny—it was the warmest spot in the house. Thorn liked to work there, in the midst of her curling ivy plants and fuzzy slenderleaf ferns. The room was full of her art—pieces of colored glass and metal hanging on wire; sculptures of unicorns and lightning and Brier herself, fashioned out of scrap metal and painted tin.

Thorn joined Brier on the stone balcony outside the sunroom and looked down on the land below.

Flower House sat on the easternmost border of Westlin.From its balcony, Thorn and Brier could peer over the stone wall and look down the high cliffs. The sheer black rock was ribboned with dozens of thin waterfalls that flowed from the sparkling mountain rivers of Westlin to the murky bogs of Estar far below.

And between the mountains and the bogs was the Break—a dark chasm, hundreds of miles long, that divided the province of Westlin from the province of Estar, cutting the realm of the Vale in two. Quakes shook the Break day and night. Sometimes they opened the chasm a tiny bit wider.

Even from such a great height, Thorn could see the darkness seeping out from the Break onto the surrounding land, like murky scum flooding out from a swollen river. She could see the flashes of white lightning as the soldiers of the Vale fought the monster that lived inside the Break—the monster that, according to their parents’ brief letters, was closer than ever to emerging.

No, not the monster, Thorn told herself. The Gulgot.

You know its name is the Gulgot, their parents’ first letter from the war front had read.Say it aloud. Say it often. Do not simply call it “the monster.” A monster is frightening and mysterious. But a thing with a name—the Gulgot, this creature, whatever it looks like, whatever rage or hunger burns in its blood—is something we can defeat.

The Gulgot climbs nearer every day. Darkness floods out of the Break ahead of him, faster and faster. You can’t trust anything in Estar now. Not the trees. Not the bridges. Not the ground. Nothing that the Gulgot’s wickedness and anger have touched.

We must face the darkness and light it up until it can no longer hurt us. Wewilldo this, my loves. You can be afraid, yes, of course you can, but do not let that fear rule your hearts.

Then, at the end of that first letter:P.S. Thorn, don’t leave your art all over the house. Keep it to the sunroom, please.

P.P.S. We love you both. Our love for you is fiercer than the combined might of all the storms in the Vale.

P.P.P.S. Try to keep Noro and Mazby from killing each other.

Sometimes, if Thorn squinted very hard and held her breath until she felt dizzy, she thought she could pick out the ant-size shapes of her parents, somewhere below in the chaos.

It had been far too long since their last letter.

“Brier, what is it?” Thorn asked. She hesitated, then placed her sweaty, filthy hand on Brier’s cold, tingling one. Brier always hummed with lightning after a day in the mountains, and Thorn never felt quite worthy enough to touch her.

Brier—older by five minutes—leaned hard against the railing, her ferocious glare fixed on the war far below.

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