Page 5

Brier climbed nimbly onto his back, and Noro glided through the damp, sleepy streets of Aeria toward the mountains. His hooves, just as hard and unbreakable as his horn, hit the cobblestones without a sound.

“It’s quiet this morning,” Brier remarked after a few moments, unable to bear the silence any longer. “Too quiet.”

It wasn’t the city itself that bothered her—streets slick with rain, flowering vines framing every dark doorway, Queen Celestyna’s castle towering silent and white overhead. Word was that more people had fled earlier in the week—two whole families, gone from their houses just likethat. Probably they were heading for the forested southern lands, which were so far away you could walk for weeks in the wild before finding one of their cities. Brier thought they were cowards, those people—abandoning the Vale right when it needed them most. But eventhatdidn’t bother her at the moment.

Whatdidbother her was the sky.

It was gray and still as stone. No thunder rumbled; no distant lightning flashed.

Noro didn’t speak until they stepped onto one of the winding dirt paths that led up into the mountains. Soon, these paths gave way to narrow, pebbled trails; tall pines became stubby ones. The wind grew unfriendly—though not as unfriendly as Brier would have liked.

Friendly winds meant stormless skies.

“You should have told her,” said Noro. Even the morning birdsong seemed muted.

Brier wondered: Did the birds know? Could they read the storms?

Did they know what was to come?

She imagined it happening, on some quiet gray morning: every bird in the Vale fleeing in a cloud of black feathers—just before the Break opened and the Gulgot clawed its way out at last.

“Ow,” Noro remarked mildly.

Brier was twisting her fists in Noro’s silken mane, as if ready to throw a punch.

She released him. “Sorry.”

“Angry about something, are we?”

“The skies. The world.”

Noro let out a puff of laughter. “Ah. That again.”

“Noro, what if—?”

“You should have told her.”

Brier ducked beneath a low-hanging pine branch. The soaked needles drew wet fingers down her spine. “Told who what?”

“You were cruel to her.”

Brier looked away, her throat tightening. “Thorn doesn’t need to know. No one needs to know.”

“I agree that the general population doesn’t need to know that the end is near,” Noro continued, his voice maddeningly calm, “but your sister is a fine keeper of secrets. You wouldn’t need to worry.”

“She couldn’t handle it,” Brier said at once. “She’d go completely wonkers. She’s so... weepy and wibbly.”

“In some ways, yes, she’s not as strong as you,” Noro replied. “In other ways, I’d say she’s in fact far stronger.”

“Hah!”

“I’m not joking, Brier.”

Brier fumed silently on Noro’s back. Low-lying gray clouds drifted around them like an army of gathering ghosts.

Then, up ahead, past a few rocky rises covered in patchy clover, a crackling light flared, brilliant and quick. A soft rumble followed; Brier felt it in her ribs.

Lightning.