Shannon Delany - Thunderstruck

From beneath her skirt, two small noses poked out, and the Fennec foxes, Kit and Kaboodle, checked that the deck was clear of the Tempest ’s rampaging cook.

Beside Jordan, a small girl knelt. Never relinquishing her grip on the pleated fabric of Jordan’s skirts, she giggled, spotting the two furry troublemakers.

Surreal . That was the best way to describe Rowen Burchette’s life: utterly and irrevocably surreal.

He stayed still, his arms wrapped around Jordan, his breathing shallow. Standing quiet as a man whose only goal was to hold a girl as long as he could now he’d found her.

His gaze took in Topside’s sweeping rails, the glowing stormlanterns topping each post, and the largest stormcell crystal he had ever seen mounted in wicked and reflective jags of wire—making the ship’s heart and power source. Non-human power source, he mentally corrected. Because, central to every function of this airship was its Conductor, the very human Jordan Astraea.

“You came,” Jordan whispered, her lips brushing the rough muslin of his shirt. Her breath warm, it pushed through the shirt’s thin fabric, and Rowen stiffened, sucking in his breath.

The scent of her—like the smell of the forest on a cool summer morning—washed through him—and her hair, cut so strangely short, brushed the tip of his nose. He sighed.

This was it, then, he thought, this was rescue.

Rescue for her and—he closed his eyes tightly and pushed the memories of his recent losses away, stuffing them down—rescue for him .

The whirr of gears and the sound of wood and metal crunching against each other as something thumped to a stop nearby drew Rowen’s attention. A set of three joined walls pierced the Topside floor, an elevator rising out of the heart of the large airship. Crushed together and wearing the blue and gold of the Artemesia ’s staff stood men dressed in sharp uniforms, their eyes sharper yet. Grasping thick loops of heavy rope connected to leather with strange metallic stitching, they carried collars and leads reminiscent to those used on hunting hounds.

Only stronger. Thicker.

Fiercer .

They eyed the Artemesia ’s deck, covered with the mangled remnants of lightships plucked from the sky by the little girl’s temper tantrum? Rowen considered but determined to keep his mouth shut about the possibility of so young and strong a Witch.

Torn from the air, the ships had gouged their way across the deck’s boards, scattering debris behind them.

Among the wreckage lay the lightships’ wounded and stunned riders: Wardens, Wraiths, and their prisoners turned accomplices.

Hats skittered and rolled across the deck, veils flapping from brims and unmasking Wraiths. Rowen shuddered, holding Jordan the smallest bit tighter. Every child heard tales of what was beneath the Wraith’s veils, along with warnings of “I will sell you to the Wraiths for stew meat”—but the reality of tormented and puckered flesh was more than imagination might conjure.

The Wardens were oddity enough: tattoos boldly marking their faces and necks, permanent sepia-colored reminders of the brutal touch of the sky’s cruel finger—what many called Lightning’s Kiss. But being an oddity was worlds different from being a living horror.

The Wardens’ tattoos looked like the strange burn that bloomed pink and frost-like across Jordan’s left cheek and scrawled down her neck—running along her shoulder and disappearing beneath her gown. On Jordan it was beautiful.

On Jordan anything was beautiful, Rowen realized.

But the Wraiths … Lightning had twisted them, their faces forever caught in a moment of torment no joy could erase. There was a crooked man, who walked a crooked mile, Rowen thought remembering the old nursery rhyme. Lightning’s Kiss had shaped the Wraiths down to their long and pointed teeth—teeth that shook Rowen back to memory.

He swallowed hard. He’d seen such teeth on the Merrow who attacked Jonathan and him as their horses drank from a stream they’d thought safe from the ongoing Wildkin War.

Merrow murdered Jonathan and pushed Rowen to face his destiny alone.

From the ship’s bow, a man wearing a hood and mask in the shape of a rhinoceros’s head clapped his hands together, striding forward with a grace more suited to an elegant gentlemen than an entertainer. He commanded everyone’s attention. Rowen knew him, masked or not.

The Wandering Wallace looked at the remnants of splintered lightships scattered about the deck and assessed the groaning Wraiths and Wardens working free of their destroyed vessels. He raised his head, saying through the open mouth of his heavy leather and brass mask, “I dare not say clap them in irons as that could create quite a shocking result, but,” he instructed the gathered guardsmen, “secure them and take them below. Disperse them among rooms so they cannot plot. But do use nice rooms. They deserve to be treated more gently by us than by those previously controlling them.”

The guards spread out from the elevator, picking paths through the smoldering wreckage, grabbing Wardens, Wraiths, and their more human-looking companions alike, looping the collars so snuggly around their necks Rowen thought more of a hangman’s noose than a dog’s leash. A few Weather Workers threatened, gnashing needle-like teeth as guards approached, but most were too stunned by what they had witnessed to resist a collar.

Rowen understood too well, his own shock only receding as he held Jordan close—her body a warm reality in a world that kept turning upside down before righting itself in strange new ways.

Willing as lambs, the Weather Workers were led to their fate below deck.

All but one.

A Wraith rolled up to its full height, tall and unnaturally slender, tufts of fine white hair dotting its wrinkled and dented scalp. Its cheeks creased in jagged furrows as thin lips pulled back from fangs. Glaring at the approaching guards, it gathered the moist air, pulling it free from the roiling nest of dark clouds surrounding the airship Artemesia and holding her aloft. Tugging the wisps together, it stirred them in the air and thickened them like a sauce reaching a boil. A hiss escaped its grim and grinning lips and it tightened the storm clouds, whipped the wind up with its will, forcing it all into a circling and screaming gale that tore around the Wraith, clawing its long, black coat. Mouth stretching wide, its lips curled at their ends, barely holding its cruel teeth back.

Any who somehow kept their hats during the earlier fight now clutched them to their heads, grimacing against the Wraith’s whirlwind.

Jordan twitched in Rowen’s grasp. The little girl with curls the color of platinum clutched Jordan’s dress tighter, both girls turning their faces from the Weather Worker and squeezing their eyes closed.

Rowen adjusted his hold on Jordan, shielding her face from the snarling air while he squinted against it, mesmerized.

In the midst of the growing storm, the Wraith threw back its head and howled. A tornado twisted along its long body, thickest by its booted feet, and with a growl, the wind lifted the Wraith into the air.

The guards moved in, but the Wandering Wallace gave no new command—merely watched dishes and linens from the overturned dining table scramble away, animated by the rush of air. Suspended above them, the Wraith spun once in midair, taking in the view and then, with the flash of a ruby ring, it vaulted into the thick cloud bank beyond, disappearing from sight.

The Wandering Wallace shrugged.

The tail of the Wraith’s windstorm wrapped Rowen’s trio even tighter, and he rewarded himself with the touch of Jordan’s silky hair between his fingers. It should have been longer. This awkward hairstyle she sported was nearly boyish, as if by shearing off her dark locks she became someone else.