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Then a crash sounded from above.

The swamp hands, rising once more from the water, jerked back as if suddenly afraid.

Thorn blinked at the churning dark sky. Her skin tingled.

Was it a storm?

“What the thunder?” Noro murmured, just before a bolt of lightning raced out of the sky and struck the ground at their feet.

Thorn barely dodged it in time. The lightning reared up, then crashed to ground once more. Thorn jumped out of the way, her boot catching on a vein of rock. She stumbled and fell, then looked back and saw the lightning racing toward her like an arrow from a bow.

In a blur of silver and white, his hooves sparking against the stone, Noro darted in front of Thorn, shielding her—and Thorn watched in horror as the lightning knocked into Noro’s belly and slammed him to the ground.

The world tilted and boomed.

The bolt hovered over Noro’s heaving body, like it was daring Noro to get up and try again.

Goose bumps rose along Thorn’s arms. Could this be the same bolt that had attacked Brier?

Tears blurring her vision, Thorn ran toward the lightning, so frightened she could hardly keep her feet moving. At the last moment, the lightning swiveled around as if to face her.

She leaped for it, Brier’s bindrock-plated gloves outstretched and buzzing. She crashed into the bolt, gloves first, and wrestled it to the ground.

Even through the protection of her gloves, heat scalded her hands. Her hurt palm stung and burned. The lightning thrashed, trying to escape her grip—she didn’t know lightningcoulddo things like escape—but the gloves, even torn as they were, shrank the bolt, dimming its light.

Thorn held fast. Tears streamed down her face from the bolt’s brilliance, from the sheer breath-stealing heat of it.

And that was when she saw the loveliest, most impossible thing.

Buried in the bolt’s twisting white light, staring back up at her, were two wide, pale blue eyes. Thorn saw the curve ofa forehead too, and the sharp line of a pointy chin.

There was apersoninside the bolt of lightning.

Thorn squinted, her heart kicking wildly.

No, not just a person—

A girl.

Very small, and fading.

.10.

The Storm-Trapped Girl

At first Thorn could only stare at the girl.

She felt as though her body was drifting away from her bones. Aperson, living inside a bolt of lightning?

The girl’s face screwed up in anger. She let out a fierce cry. The buzzing lightning warped her voice.

Thorn pressed her hands closer together, gritting her teeth against the sting of her hurt palm. Between her gloves, the bolt sparked and twisted. Brier had many times explained to her how the process worked. If Thorn could get a good grip on the bolt, she could gather up its energy into her bindrock-plated gloves,shrink it into a tight orb, and then Noro would help her trap the lightning in his horn to take to the royal forgers, and—

Noro.

Thorn glanced at him. He lay not far from her, his belly heaving. A charred blackness marred his white coat. His vivid midnight-blue eyes had faded to a milky gray. Thorn felt sick looking at him. That burn on his belly looked just like Brier’s.

The bolt thrumming between Thorn’s gloved palms suddenly wrenched itself free, so hard that Thorn stumbled and fell.