Page 211 of Carousel

Magic is just there.

There’s no need to feel fear for who I am, or who I might become.

All that matters is now.

The emotion that letting go gives me…

Is pure joy.

I close my eyes. Exhale.

I open them.

Riss, almost directly in front of me, is frozen in the air.

So’s an enemy ship behind her.

So are the other ships around us. Even Cosmer’s.

The only thing moving in the sky at all is a cannonball.

Which is heading straight for Riss.

She must have feinted again. But maybe she’s done it too many times now, and the ship chasing her, with the Assembly’s gleaming, bright red crest clearly visible, predicted it.

I can’t drop my power, freeing her, without freeing all other ships.

I can’t radio to her with the bands disconnected.

There’s nothing in the world I can do but scream, waves of magic and pain ripping out of my back and skull, as the cannonball ploughs through her stationary ship at an impossible, unsurvivable speed.

Her ship ignites.

For a moment, the ball of fire is orange as the dawn is now. A second sun on the horizon.

Then it falls away in ribbons of smoke.

Debris clears.

Her patch of sky, and my ribs, are empty.

CHAPTER 38

The Unwanted Truce

There’s a silence in The Bridge I don’t think will ever break. Should ever be broken. Because breaking it would mean what happened – what we all just witnessed – was real. And not some awful, terrible nightmare I need to wake up from.

I thought I was done with crying. But tears are not done with me. They leak out of me as I stagger backwards, sort of dazed.

I don’t know what went wrong. The magic worked. It still wasn’t enough to save her. If I’d released my magic a couple of seconds faster, or known how to free her, and her alone, so she had a chance. Wasn’t just frozen, like a sitting duck…

Magic can’t fix everything.

Vaguely, I’m aware Drake is stepping towards me.

“No,” I snap. “Don’t come any closer.”

“It’s all right,” he says. Muted.