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“I can’t ask that of you,” Esta told them, looking suddenly panicked at the idea.
“You didn’t,” Viola said. She glanced up at Ruby, who laced her arm more securely through Viola’s as though to indicate that she was coming as well.
Dolph walked over to Nibsy’s still body and pried the ring off his finger. He tossed it to Darrigan. “We’re going to need this.”
“We?” Harte asked.
“Do you really think I tortured myself these last few months for something so simple as vengeance?” Dolph asked. “This is it—the one chance to finish what the Order began. I was the one who went after the Book and released this mess into the world, so I’ll help to finish what I started. I owe it to those who have fallen.” He looked at Viola. Jianyu. “And to those I’ve disappointed and betrayed. If we can stop the Brink from taking one more life, then I can go to my grave knowing I’ve done all I could to make up for my failings.”
He’d no sooner spoke than they heard a thunderous crack. In the distance, the Brink lurched, and a wave of energy snapped through the streets, rippling through the city and threatening to shatter it.
“We need to go,” Jianyu told them. “We need to get to the Brink.”
Esta turned to him then, and in her golden eyes was everything they hadn’t yet said. But he understood. He’d always understood.
“Let’s go end this, Harte.”
He wouldn’t be able to touch her once more before they leapt into the unknown. He wished he could. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and keep her safe. Forever. But maybe all they’d ever had was the moment before them, stark and beautiful in its wonder and terror.
He could no more stop Esta from this path than he could stop magic itself. And whatever happened, he’d be with her.
“Together,” he said finally. Because he knew in that instant that it didn’t matter. If they died today or a thousand years from now, whatever time he had with her would never be enough.
IN BROOKLYN
Viola’s fingers were laced through Ruby’s as the wagon careened toward the bridge, urged on by Abel’s steady hand and caught in the web of Esta’s power. Beneath its wheels, the streets had been turned into buckled bits of cobblestone and concrete from the energy coursing through the city’s grid.
She’d been there the night of the Manhattan Solstice. Viola had watched the sun’s light transform the streets into rivers of gold, shimmering with power. She’d felt the danger and the wonder as well, but this? This was far worse. The three bolts of electric power, amplified by whatever corrupt ritual the Order had performed, had not stopped pouring their energy into the center of the park. The sigil in Madison Square was a beacon of light, and from it, that dangerous power flowed, feeding into the grid of streets and lighting the city from within, threatening everything.
Beneath the wagon, the streets quaked under the strain of the power charging into them. They wouldn’t hold. But the bridge was ahead, just there in the distance, growing ever larger as they approached. So too was the Brink.
Viola believed Esta, trusted her as well. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t afraid of what was to come. Though the thought of approaching that terrible barrier willingly—of breaching it? The very idea made her recoil. Since she’d come to those shores, since her family had crossed into the city, not caring what it meant for her power, Viola had known, bone-deep, that the Brink was the deadly limit of her existence. Now she would test that limit with nothing but flimsy silver discs, ritual objects created by a simple man.
It would be worth it, she thought as she looped her arm through Ruby’s and drew her closer. If it worked, perhaps they would have a chance.
If the city didn’t end them first.
“Once we get there,” she told Ruby softly, “you should go. You and Cela and Abel. Get yourselves across the bridge and away from the danger.”
“No,” Ruby said, her fair brows knitting themselves together. “I’m staying.”
“There’s nothing you can do,” Viola said.
“I’m not running off,” Ruby argued. “I’m not leaving you to whatever fate you’re about to walk into. The Brink can’t touch me.”
“Do you see these streets?” she asked. “Do you see what’s happening all around us? It’s not the Brink you have to fear right now. It’s the island itself. If we can’t stop this—”
“You’ll stop it,” Cela said from her place across the wagon. She was sitting shoulder to shoulder with Jianyu, their bodies pressed close together despite the room they had around them.
“Viola is right,” Jianyu said. “You and your brother, and Ruby as well, you must get to the other side. It will be safer in Brooklyn, where the city’s grid does not reach.”
“It won’t be safer anywhere if the Brink comes down,” Cela reminded him. “Isn’t that what you told us?”
“End magic, end the world,” Ruby said, giving Viola’s words back to her.
“We’re not going anywhere,” Cela told them. “None of us.”
It happened too quickly and not quickly enough. The streets were shuddering with the power coursing through them. The long span of the bridge was already beginning to sway when Abel urged the wagon up over the dark waters to the wall of flame that waited.
