Shannon Delany - Thunderstruck

“It is a distinct possibility now I see your companions.” He looked at the stormlights on posts surrounding the dais and maintaining the feel of daylight inside the manufactured storm cradling their ship. He addressed Evie. “Evening is falling. Shall we discuss business?”

The elevator made one more descent, the Topside deck cleared of human debris.

Ginger Jack was already seated at the table, tinkering with odds and ends of mechanisms he’d pillaged. He was already at work, determined to fix at least one of the damaged lightships.

The foxes zipped around his chair, whining.

Evie pulled a chair over for herself, turning it so she straddled its back, her arms crossed. “Might we include the Conductor in our discussion?” Spotting the circling foxes, she reached down and grabbed one, settling the snapping beast in her lap.

“Call her Jordan,” a tall, dark-haired man said as he joined them. “Or better yet,” his expression stayed strict as that on anyone Rowen had seen—except his mother; no one’s expression was as sour as hers when Rowen disappointed her—”call her Lady Astraea.”

Rowen rolled his lips together. As much as he did not like any other man suggesting how someone should refer to Jordan, at least this man referred to her with respect and encouraged others to do the same. That he could respect. That he could even like.

Evie smiled up at the tall brunette, stroking the annoyed fox so firmly its oversized ears flopped. Slowly its snarl faded. “And you are … her agent?”

The man pushed dark curls back from his eyes. “No. Merely someone who believes in respect and equality. She is far more than a title or a rank.”

“A dissenter,” Ginger Jack said, not looking up. He pulled his hands back from the metal bits and watched them move without his help. Halfheartedly involved in conversation, he nodded to himself.

“You are not?” the other man asked.

Jack shrugged. “My actions speak more clearly than any label.” He stood, gazing at heaps of parts still scattered across the deck. Stepping away, he chose one that appeared promising, and rifled through it until he’d found something interesting.

“Marion Kruse,” the man introduced himself.

The name yanked Rowen’s attention back from his friend’s scavenging. “House Kruse?” Everyone in Philadelphia knew the tragic tale of House Kruse’s fall. A Weather Witch dragged away from a birthday party and a poisoning that killed the remaining family—perpetrated by a household servant. The family name was rife with scandal. And Rowen had hunted with Lord Kruse and his eldest boy.

A boy evidently grown to manhood and now standing before him, dark hair falling into troubled gray eyes.

Marion gave him so sharp a look Rowen shut his mouth. Some topics were not his to address.

“Bring the Conductor—young Lady Astraea—over,” the Wandering Wallace instructed Rowen.

“I’ll fetch her,” Marion offered.

The Wandering Wallace raised his hand. “No. Rowen.”

Marion squinted at the blond next to him. “Rowen … Burchette? It’s been years …”

Rowen blew out a sigh and stalked off to again try addressing Jordan and Caleb.

Behind him he heard more chairs get righted, wooden feet scraping across the battered deck planks. He left the noise and the intermingled scents and focused on the sound of his own feet clomping across the deck toward the girl who openly chose the company of a different man.

He paused a few feet from them, noting how comfortable Caleb was by her side. And how calm, safe, and secure she seemed to feel in his presence.

And how their hands slipped together, fingers entwining.

Rowen wondered briefly why he was surprised. He’d expected this. No, not this exactly—he’d expected she’d have given up on him, that she’d have been wounded by his lack of success in rescuing her. Perhaps that she’d thought he’d decided not to come and find her.

He hadn’t expected that she would have found someone to replace him. But Caleb and Jordan were so ensconced in conversation they did not hear him approach.

“Did the Maker do this to you?” Jordan asked, her fingers moving so lightly across Caleb’s damaged cheek Rowen paused abruptly and looked away.

“No,” he murmured. “It comes from a different torturer, a different time. Sometimes it seems a different lifetime.”

“Many of my memories are like that, too. Distant. I want to run away, Caleb,” she confessed desperately. “Run and never come back. Leave all this—all these problems to someone else. I want to go somewhere quiet. A place where there is only nature. Only nature and time.”

Caleb glanced at the ship’s ornate controls. “I fear there’s no easy escape for any of us. Especially not you, ” he told Jordan. “You control a huge airship filled to the brim with dissenters and those thinking dissenters should be destroyed. They call you Stormbringer .”

Jordan looked down.

“The name matters not,” Caleb said. “Still you are one of the few truly capable of changing things for our people—you cannot abandon our kind now. Not when we are so close to having a chance for change.”

“We aren’t all of the same kind,” Jordan protested. “Your kind, his kind,” she jabbed a thumb over her shoulder toward Marion, “those kind are not my kind at all? I am an anomaly proving any one of us can be your kind if broken.”

Rowen stepped more slowly, desperate not to draw attention to his proximity while they confided in each other, but even more desperate to know all that was being confided.

“You are not a Witch?”

“I should not have been able to be Made a Witch,” she corrected. “I am the exception to a rule—an exception that proves the rule has been wrong all along. I am living proof that each and every one of us can be Made, each of us has storms brewing within. Making has nothing to do with heritage and everything to do with being broken. Every person alive makes as good a slave as a lord or lady—I am the living proof of that .”

“Then you must stay the course, tell this truth, and bring equality. You are the key to changing the path of history with this revelation.”

“What else might you tell me, Caleb?”

Caleb paused. “That whoever else knows the truth of this is in great danger. If it is desired that we are kept down—in our place—you are the key showing that no one’s place is carved in stone. That is a very messy sort of thinking for those in government to allow the public. You bear a dangerous truth—the type that shifts paradigms.”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“That is the true definition of the Stormbringer, I think. You are in great danger, my dear,” Caleb confirmed. “But now you are faced with an equally great choice: run or face down destiny?”

“What if running is my destiny?”

A board whined beneath Rowen’s weight and Caleb faced him.

Glancing down, Rowen cleared his throat.

They released hands—no, Caleb released Jordan’s hand. Jordan’s fingers sought Caleb’s once more, crawling up the tips of his to interlock again.

“Yes,” Caleb coaxed, leaning slightly forward, a smile sliding up one side of his face.

Rowen focused on Jordan’s face instead. On the scar that crawled along her neck and cheek, blossoming like some exotic and angry flower and yet unable to detract from her beauty. It simply gave her beauty another layer.

She glared at him before looking away.

“They request your presence,” Rowen said, his breath tight in his chest.

She looked behind her, at the mechanisms controlling key aspects of the ship she Conducted.