Page 35 of Skalterra By Nightmare
“No, it’s not.” Tiernan grunted. His gold tunic and leather armor hid under a yellow cloak, and he wore the hood up. A couple of twisted hair locks hung in his eyes, which he kept resolutely trained on the wood paneling just above Fana’s head. “She means lightning.”
“Is it storming?” Orla looked out the window, but the night was clear. Two full moons washed the passing forest canopy in shifting shades of silver. I gave them a double-take. Skalterra was real. I knew that now, and somehow the idea was easier to swallow while sitting safe on a train instead of dodging magic blasts on a parapet or running through a forest.
Still, the double moons took me a moment to accept.
I had really thought for a moment that Galahad wasn’t going to summon me back. In the back of Sabrina’s car, I’d been stupid enough to think this was all over.
Crap.
Sabrina’s car. That’s where my body was, asleep and unable to wake up unless I died here or if Galahad released me. It wouldn’t be long before Sabrina and Liam would be trying to shake me awake.
Maybe, if I was lucky, Sabrina would let me sleep there, and they wouldn’t ask any questions.
“I actually meant your lights.” I pulled myself back to the electricity conversation.
“Our lights!” Orla stood to better point at the pipes that ran along the ceiling. “These are steam-lamps! Diluted Skal is heated into steam and then pumped through the pipes to create light. Why did you think it was lightning?”
“I didn’t. Tiernan misunderstood what I meant.” I took special delight in calling out Tiernan. My blue-haired Nightmare body didn’t have any of the bruises I’d sustained from the previous night, but I hadn’t forgotten how he’d blown me up. “We have lights in Keldori too. We make them with electricity.”
The others stared back at me with varying degrees of confusion. Only Fana seemed to take what I’d said at face value, nodding solemnly and looking much too serious for a ten-year-old.
“You trap little storms in glass without magick?” Tiernan raised a dubious eyebrow.
“Not exactly, no. We use things like batteries to create, um, little lightning. And then it runs through wires to power things like lightbulbs.”
“Lightbulbs,” Orla repeated, relishing the word. “And what’s a battery?”
“By the Three Magicians, Orla, don’t be so dense.” Tiernan glared at her from under his hood. “You can’tmakelittle lightning, not without Magicians. It’s a lie.”
I stood up and motioned for Fana to swap seats with me so I could sit across from Tiernan. He leaned back against the wood paneling of the cabin in apprehension while I bent over to unlace the boots I’d woken up in, revealing wool socks.
“What are you doing?” Tiernan asked. I pulled my feet free of the boots in response and placed them on the dusty, wooden floor.
“Give me your cloak,” I said. Tiernan recoiled, but Fana rushed to pull hers off over her head and offer it to me. I threw the thick material to the floor.
With a grin, I rubbed the soles of my feet back and forth on the cloak.
The others watched in quiet anticipation, and Tiernan’s shoulders relaxed with a roll of his eyes.
“You’re getting the Divine Sovereign’s cloak dirty. This is stupid,” he said, and I reached a hand towards him to offer my pointer finger.
“Touch it,” I goaded.
“No.” His nose wrinkled in disgust.
“Coward.”
He scowled and crossed his arms.
“I’m not being—”
I leaned forward to tap his nose.
An electric zap tickled the tip of my finger, and Tiernan swatted my hand away. Orla laughed at his scandalized face, and Fana allowed herself a timid giggle that made her black curls bounce.
“Electricity.” I smirked. “Or ‘little lightning’.”
“It’s magick,” Tiernan insisted.
