A bridge took shape. I’d said the words, but I hadn’t pictured aspecific sort of bridge—what kind could form, with nothing to form from? Yet it was from nothing the bridge appeared—from the air itself. It shimmered in the distance, as though becoming more concentrated. Then a structure coalesced in one great rush, the color like cloudy blocks of ice. It started by the platform, then skimmed over the water toward us, growing as it went, accompanied by handrails made of the same concentrated nothing. When it reached the shore, I could see it more clearly, this grayish glasslike structure, solid and unnerving.
“Cross!” Élodie screamed from down the beach. “Birra, cross!”
It took a moment—I imagine no one trusted the sudden, bizarre stillness around them, let alone this strange bridge. The back of my neck prickled. This was far outside the scope of anything human magic could do, and how could you trust something you didn’t understand? But then one of the figures started running across the transparent platform, and others followed. I watched them dash toward us, breathing as Daziel had instructed, magic thrumming through me.
In. Out. In. Out.
My vision was going. The people on the bridge were getting smaller and smaller. Did my knees work? Daziel had wings.
Had I performed blood magic? Had I bound a demon? Had I broken the law and a two-thousand-year-old treaty?
Runners emerged, staggering up the beach, soaking wet. I closed my eyes. I couldn’t watch anymore. I had to concentrate on holding the magic, on not letting it rip me apart into a thousand fleshy, bloody bits. Like the scrolls. My head hurt. Was it supposed to hurt?”
“Naomi.” A light female voice spoke my name. Élodie. “Everyone’s safe.”
That was good. Breathing was good.
A hand on my shoulder. A deeper female voice. “Naomi, are you all right?”
I knew that voice. Opened my eyes. Yael, soaked to the bone. Had she been on the raft? She looked like an otter. Where was her other otter to hold her hand?
“Let it go,” Daziel said.
Let it go? How? I’d never handled magic like this. The more it streamed through me, the more I felt like I was merely a vessel meant to be poured through, to accept and process and deliver magic, spreading stillness across the world.
“Say ‘stop,’ ” Daziel said.
My stomach hurt. Like those years growing up when the harvest had been bad and my belly ground against itself, searching for something to eat.
“Say ‘stop’now.”
He sounded serious. He must really want me to do…what? What did he want me to do? My whole body seemed to be centering toward something, like a flame, and it wanted to keep burning and burning and burning…
“Naomi.” Daziel’s talons dug into my forearms. “Naomi.Say ‘stop.’ ”
That was it. That was what he wanted. I had to open my mouth. Had to push sound through my vocal cords…
“Stop,” I managed.
Like a puppeteer cutting a marionette’s string, the magic snapped out of me. I collapsed. Daziel caught me, arms circling my waist and pulling me so my head rested on his shoulder. I was drained and empty and lightheaded, too exhausted to be confused. At my side, Élodie, Birra, and Yael stared at me withtremulous expressions. I looked beyond them. The bridge dissipated in a gust, swirls of white drifting away and dissolving.
“Leave,” he barked at the others. “Get everyone to the caves.”
Élodie swallowed but didn’t move. Yael stepped forward, her patrician features grimly set. “Let her go.”
“Leave,” he said, and they were blown backward. His wings snapped shut, cocooning us again. He slashed a hot talon against the marks on my skin, in one direction, then the other, forming a bloody X that the heat of his claw seared shut even as he made it. I screamed, both from pain and surprise. Then he reeled his wings back, revealing Yael and Élodie chanting spells. Birra held a rock and wound her arm to throw it.
“I’m not harming her,” Daziel said, sounding furious.
“Let go of her,” Yael demanded. She held a stylo in one hand, a clay tablet in another—of course she’d always be prepared to cast.
Élodie’s gaze had transferred to the waves, which were wild once again. “The beach is going to be underwater soon.”
“What did you do to her?” Yael asked, face pale. “That wasn’t normal. You shouldn’t have been able to do that.”
“I saved your life,” Daziel snapped. To me, he asked, “Can you walk?”
“Yes.” I took a step, and my knee collapsed. I gazed at it, baffled. Why wasn’t my knee working? How odd.
