On the Edge

“Do you know what happens when you overflash?” he asked softly.

“No.”

“I’ve done it once.” He pulled her close, his muscled arm under her breasts. “We were trapped in a field while the Gaul’s summoners ran a horde of marloks at us. They’re simian animals, large predatory apes. There was no cover and no support. There were just the five of us, and we stood back to back and flashed. I remember my mouth was full of blood. My vision wavered. I felt like my arms were stretching out into the distance.”

“What happened?”

“William went into rending. Changelings do this once in a while, especially after puberty. They lose touch with reality and go berserk. He went crazy, and we just hit the ground, because when he rends, he kills everything. I’d asked him about it once, and he told me rending is going to the place where there is no God. Make of that what you will. When he finally wore himself out, the five of us were the only things alive on the field.”

“What would’ve happened if you had kept going, had kept flashing?” she asked.

“I would’ve died. I wouldn’t have even known it. You’d think that you could push just a touch further, and then the world would fade and so would your life.” He kissed her cheek. “I won’t let it happen to you.”

She frowned.

“You don’t know when to stop,” he said. “You overdo it. I’ve watched you flash for two hours straight, when you were trying to get Ataman’s defense down. You have no clue where your limits are.”

She rose on her elbow. “Declan . . .”

“There were times when I’ve deferred to you. The time when you stopped me from going after Simoen or the time when you told your elders about William. I did so because you understood the situation better. It’s your turn to defer to me. I know what I’m talking about, Rose. I was a professional soldier for over a decade. You’re brilliant, but you need training. If you go on that dock alone, you’ll die, and I won’t let it happen.”

“No.” She pushed away from him. “Don’t you see—”

“I see.” He pulled her back and kissed her. “You’ll magnificently kill the first wave of the hounds, and then the second wave will tear your throat out, and everyone will cry at your funeral and describe how you laid down your life for the good of your neighbors.”

She recoiled.

He reached over, picked up her hand, and kissed her fingers. “We do this my way. We both survive, and then we deal with Casshorn.” His stare fixed her. “Promise me, Rose.”

What he said made sense. She wasn’t too proud to understand that, and she still got what she wanted—he wouldn’t be on the dock alone. “Okay,” she said simply. “We’ll do it your way. But we still need something from Casshorn for this curse to work.”

Declan’s eyebrows furrowed. “Do you think George is strong enough to reanimate a creature? Only for a short while.”

“He might be,” she said. “We’ll have to ask him.”

“If he can do it, then I might have a plan.”

His hand wandered down her body, stroking. He kissed her, and she slid tighter against him.

“Rose?” Tom’s gruff voice called from the porch.

Declan swore.

GEORGE sat on a fallen log and looked at the three dead crows lying on the ground before him. Sad, black bodies. Lifeless. They had been carefully killed, with a bow and arrow. Not a lot of damage to repair.

Behind him, Jack sniffed at the air. He probably thought the birds would make a nice snack. To the right, Mémère and Rose sat on an old wooden log.

“I can’t believe you’re going to make him do this.” Mémère was angry. Her cheeks were flushed.

“He’ll raise something again, sooner or later,” Rose said.

“But not so soon!”

Rose was using her “reasonable” voice. He never won an argument with that voice.

“When would it be not too soon?” Rose asked.

“I don’t know!” Mémère waved her arms. “Not now.”

“If it was up to you, not too soon would mean never.”

“And what’s wrong with that?”

“You can’t expect him never to use his talent again,” Rose said.

“George,” Declan said.

George looked at him, crouched by the crows.

“What I’m about to ask you to do is called combat necromancy. We’re going to play some games first, and then we’ll do the hard part. Understand?”

George nodded.

“Before, when you raised things, you felt a connection between you and them, right?”

George nodded again. It felt like having a fish on a very thin line, always shivering and tugging the line, but not too hard.

“And sometimes you stopped them from doing things. Like the time you stopped your grandfather from attacking Rose.”

George nodded again. He could do that. He didn’t do it very often, because he wanted things to be alive and do things on their own, but yes, he could do that.

“I want you to take it a step further,” Declan said. “I’d like you to raise one of those birds and keep a very good control of it. You have to understand that this bird is raised for this one mission only. Once the mission is over, you must let it go, because it did its job and it deserves to rest. Do you understand?”

George nodded.

Declan kept looking at him.

“I understand,” George said.

“Go ahead,” Declan said.

George touched the bird on the right. She was the smallest, and he felt sorry for her the most. The bird pulled at his magic, it stretched, snapped, and Georgie recoiled, biting his lip. It always hurt when he raised something. He couldn’t see the arrow hole under the feathers, but he felt it, and he fed a little of his magic down the line, closing it up, nice and neat, just in case.

The bird shivered. Slowly, she stretched one leg, then the other, rolled, and got to her feet.

Mémère sucked in her breath. “Now you’ve done it. You’ve started the whole thing over again.”

“Very good.” Declan rose to his feet and moved to stand by the bird. “I want you to close your eyes and turn around, keeping the bird very still. I’m going to touch the bird, and I need you to tell me when I do.”

George closed his eyes. A faint touch disturbed the magic. “Now,” he said.

“Very good,” Declan said. “What am I doing now?”

“You’re pinning the wings to the body.”

“I need you to tell me when you feel me let go.”

A long moment passed. The pressure on the crow vanished. “Now!”

“Excellent. You can turn around now.”

Declan walked away until several yards separated them. “Try to make it walk toward me.”

“Her,” Georgie corrected. “It’s a girl bird.”

“Sorry. Please make her walk toward me.”

George tugged on the line. He’d never before tried to make a bird walk. Stopping the creatures from moving was easy. This was harder. The crow stumbled and spun in place.

“Take your time,” Declan said.

George concentrated. The longer he focused on the magic between them, the more complex it became: at first it was a line, then it was a whole bunch of thinner lines, woven together, and then the lines fractured into a glowing web that clutched at the bird. He tried to tug on the web. The crow jerked and fell into the dirt. Georgie shook his head, trying to clear his vision.