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“Please, hurry,” she whispered. “Brier will never forgive me if I let anything happen to him. He’s like family, really, he keeps us safe while our parents are gone—”

“Wait. You’re Brier’s sister?” Zaf looked quickly at Thorn, from her head to her toes. “Yes, of course. You look just like her.”

Bartos frowned at her. “You know Brier? How?”

Zaf’s pale, pointed face was grave. “I struck her, up in the mountains.”

Bartos blew out a sharp breath.

Thorn felt as though Zaf had struckherin the chest. “But...why?”

“Because your sister, and all her friends, are hunting my people,” Zaf said archly. “Killing us, one by one. We’re almost all gone. Soon there will be none of us left. I had almost fought free of my bolt when your sister found me. Bad timing, on her part.”

Thorn stared at Zaf. “I don’t understand.”

“You mean, the lightning isn’t... lightning?” Bartos asked, sounding like the small boy who had once helped Thorn’s father in the gardens. “The lightning is... people?”

Zaf’s face fell. “We’ve been trapped in it for years. You really didn’t know?”

Noro cried out sharply.

Thorn stroked his neck with trembling fingers. Her hand hurt like thunder, but she didn’t care. The thought of traveling through Estar without Noro made her feel like she’d been smashed under a boot.

Zaf, stony-faced, rolled up her gown’s sleeves. “All right. This may hurt him. It’s been decades since I’ve been able to use my hands.”

She placed her palms against the smoking black wound on Noro’s belly, bowed her head, and closed her eyes. Her palms brightened, and her body pulsed with light, as if she carried another bolt deep inside her.

Thorn’s tongue tingled. Her skin felt hot and sharp.

“Noro, please, don’t leave me,” she whispered next to his downy ear. “We have a long way to go still. We have storms to catch and...”

She fell quiet and glanced at Zaf.

If Zaf was telling the truth, if all the lightning bolts had people inside them, then that meant...

With a sigh, Zaf sat back on her heels. Her paleness looked even paler—watered down and washed out. She shook her frizzy hair over her face.

“Well,” she said quietly, “he’ll live now.”

Thorn, astonished, touched Noro’s healed belly. His white coat shone. He grunted, pushed himself to his feet, and shook out his long white mane with a snort.

Thorn bit her lip. Now was not the time to tell him he was acting horsey.

Nor was it the time to ask Zaf to hurry back to Westlin and help Brier next—though Thorn felt the words on her tongue.

“How did you do that?” Bartos asked Zaf. “What did you do to him?”

“All witches of the Vale can heal,” said Zaf, glaring at the ground. “Or wecould, before... before everything happened.” She traced her fingers across the soles of her feet, her mouth twisting. “I suppose we still can. I justdid, after all. But it doesn’t feel good, like it used to. It makes me feel...” Zaf sighed. “It feels like there’s only so much of me left. Once, we were wild and powerful. We lived free. Now...”

Thorn watched as Zaf shrank into herself, like a small animal hiding from a storm. She pulled off her coat and wrapped it around Zaf’s shoulders. Maybe Brier wouldn’t have given Zaf her coat. Maybe Brier wouldn’t trust Zaf, not even after she saved Noro.

But,Thorn thought,I’m not Brier.

“Tell me what happened,” Thorn said. She hesitated, then touched Zaf’s hand. “Maybe I can help.”

Zaf glared at her sidelong. “I’ve seen you around. My head’s buzzing like bees, but I’m starting to remember now. You clean people’s trash, right? How would that help me?”

Now Thorn was the one who wanted to wind herself up into a knot and hide.