Chapter Thirty One

                                    

                                          
Lily couldn't feel anything. Her right arm was numb and her hands felt like television static. Lily's glowing eyes throbbed. She could only look at the scene she'd caused around her in horror, a soft grey glow dancing across the ground as she stared at what she'd done. 
                          
The graveyard was flattened - headstones were scattered like ashes. Puddles of rain littered the ground like Swiss cheese. The storm was gone, whatever she'd done had dispersed it out of the clearing. All that was left was dirt and broken rogues kneeling around her. Some cradled their shattered limbs, Lily spotted a few just sitting there paralysed in shock, but the ones that weren't moving worried her until she saw them breathing slowly. Unconscious, not dead. 
                          
What had she done? Lily pushed the question out of her mind when she looked down at her left hand, her exhaustion pulsing in her heart. Her bones began to weigh her down but she had the strength to lift her hand up and marvel at the sparks of lightning bouncing between the ice that had stuck to the hairs on her arm. Fatigue grated down her spine despite the joy sizzling in her stomach - she was harmless to lightning. 
                          
She was alive. 
                          
All she knew was fire and pain when that lighting strike hit her, that her eyes burned brighter than ever before and she couldn't stop herself from unleashing the power locked in her bones. Lily didn't want to recall what she'd done, not yet. She wasn't out of the woods. 
                          
She was still in rogue territory. 
                          
Lily took a step away from the pole, frowning at the shadow it caused when the moon finally lit up the clearing, free from the storm covering it. Turning, Lily swallowed when she saw the pole wasn't a pole anymore - instead a melted gnarled claw reaching for the sky, like it was trying to grasp the power of the lightning that forced it apart. 
                          
Lily lifted her left hand again, the sparks across her arm smaller now, noticing the pale ruby scars criss-crossing around her wrist - burn marks from where her mother's bracelets and zip ties had melted, already healed over. She knew she'd have a matching set around her ankles from where Kristofer had zip tied them together moments before the storm arrived.
                          
She looked to her other arm and frowned when she realised it was still numb. With her jumper still in tatters around her waist thanks to Kristofer's knife work, her bare arm was in full view. 
                          
White scars raced down her arm, following the path of her veins. From the top of her shoulder to her knuckles, lines like lightning darted between her freckles. Lily gently stroked her new permanent markings, flinching when they were still tender to touch. White sparks also raced on her forearm, akin to the other, but her right arm now bore a permanent reminder of what happened. 
                          
Lily had read about lightning scars. She knew paralysis wasn't permanent, something that would heal over time, but Lily would forever be reminded of when she was kidnapped and almost killed. 
                          
Lily turned when she heard more rogues enter the clearing. Yuric stood at the treeline with the other fifty rogues, all halting when they saw their comrades fallen at their feet. Kristofer shifted when he saw his leader standing there frozen, hobbling as best as he could until he stood again. Yuric and his rogues were bruised heavily, some clutching their limbs in pain from where they'd fallen over with the quake from the superbolt.
                          
No one moved. The rogues were frozen in place, and Yuric's dark gaze wondered from the warped metal pole shred by lightning, to Lily who carried it on her arms. 
                          
He trembled, large fists shaking. His lip curled up, eyes forming slits and flaring a feral gold, and he took a step forward, favouring his right leg. 
                          
Lily took a step back, her heel brushing the mound she had been tied to, and the lightning sparked off her arms and onto the ground around her. The rogues scampered away from the pools of water as quickly as they could with their bruised bodies and broken bones. They stood at the edges of the clearing, where fallen trees now rested, helpless as the ground turned into a deadly electric trap.