Page 77 of Thornlight

Brier, swallowing hard, followed him.

“This way!” she told the harvesters.

Slipping through the crevice between the boulders, her skin crawled. She emerged into a smaller clearing, sheltered from the wind. The tall rocks surrounding them leaned against each other like elders in conference.

Brier turned back just in time to see six stormwitches jump down from the rocks and tackle her friends to the ground.

“Don’t hurt them!” she cried. She hid her face against a boulder soft with brown moss. It smelled of snow. “Be kind to them,please!”

A moment passed. Then a few more.

Something soft touched Brier’s shoulder.

Brier looked back through her fingers.

Zino was watching her, his blue eyes sharp as ice. Beyond him, Farver, Gert, and Reston lay on the ground, cloth sacks over their faces, wrists bound. A dozen stormwitch children heaved them onto the backs of three kneeling unicorns.

“Why did you do this?” Zino asked.

Brier opened her mouth to respond, and couldn’t. She was crying and shivering, like some weak city girl who couldn’t handle the mountain air she so loved. Sometimes, after a long day of harvesting, she had come home to Flower House and felt thatthe warm stillness of their house was not cozy, but sweltering.

On those nights, Thorn had been the one to suggest sleeping with the windows open, even though that meant sharing a bed, sleeping squashed together under a pile of all the blankets they could find.

“You don’t mind it?” Brier had once asked, nose to nose with her twin. “The cold?”

Thorn had smiled, her dark hair in tangles against her cheeks. “I like that you like it.”

Staring at Zino, Brier’s tears spilled over. She wasn’t used to the feeling. Thorn was the weepy one. Brier was... Brier was...

But she didn’t know what or who she was, not anymore. Not now that everything had changed.

“I didn’t know what they were doing,” she said, her voice hoarse and small. “I didn’t know whatwewere doing. They didn’t tell me.”

Zino’s eyes widened. He looked her over, then whispered, “Brier Skystone?”

Miserably, Brier nodded. “My sister took my place, because of this.”

She placed her palm against her chest. The faded burn sizzled slightly. She winced and bit her lip.

Zino was watching her closely. “You didn’t know?”

Brier shook her head. “And now that I do...”

She couldn’t finish.

Zino nodded, his sharp face no longer quite so sharp. “Now that you do.”

Brier looked down at her two snow-crusted boots. “I can help you find the rest of the harvesters. They’re all out working on the mountain trails.” She hardly recognized her voice. “We’ll hold them somewhere, so no more lightning will be trapped until we come up with some kind of plan to...”

To what? Ask the queen to, if she wouldn’t mind, please stop harvesting lightning and let the Gulgot come and destroy them all? What an idea. Brier might as well ask Thorn to stop painting, or Mazby to—

Mazby.

Brier gasped and looked up, but Zino had already whistled like a snowbird. One of the other stormwitches hurried over, a girl with her white hair in messy knots all over her head. In her hands she held a bundle of cloth.

“We rather like the little fellow,” admitted Zino, “though I don’t think he likes us very much. He banged up his wing a bit helping you escape before, but I don’t think it’s too bad.”

Brier reached for Mazby, all bundled up in a ratty red scarf, his crown feathers askew but whole. She cradled him against her chest, kissed his head.

---