Dolph took the object from Nibs. A bit of cloth had been wrapped around a brass button—one Dolph recognized from the maid’s uniform Leena had worn. The scrap weighed no more than a breath between his fingertips. It was ragged on one side. It must have been torn from one of her petticoats. She’d used what looked like blood to scrawl two words in Latin across its surface. Her blood, he realized. The message had been important enough to bleed for. But at the sight of the smeared letters, already drying to a dark rusty brown, a feeling of cold dread sank into his very bones.
“We’ll get her back.” Dolph refused to imagine any other outcome. He rubbed his thumb across the scrap, feeling its softness along with the familiar echo of Leena’s energy. He pressed his own magic into the scrap, into the traces of her blood, trying to feel more and understand what had happened. While he could sense a person’s affinity if they had one, could even tap into it and borrow it if he touched them, reading objects hadn’t ever been his strength.
Still, Nibs was right—what little trace of Leena he sensed felt off, weak. He tossed the button aside but tucked the scrap of fabric into his inner coat pocket, the one closest to his heart.
“There’s still time,” he said, already heading toward the place where their carriage waited.
With the streets empty of traffic, they caught up to the other coach quickly. But as they followed it south through the city, he had a sinking feeling about where the carriage was headed. When they finally turned onto Park Row, Dolph knew for sure.
He directed their carriage to stop at the edge of the park that surrounded City Hall. Beyond the night-darkened gardens stood the great, hulking terminal that blocked the view of the bridge to Brooklyn. Steel and glass, it loomed almost like a warning in the night. Beyond it stood the first bridge of its kind to cross such a great span of water. And bisecting the bridge was the Brink, the invisible boundary that kept the Mageus from leaving the city with their magic intact. From corrupting the lands and the country beyond with what the Order—and most of the population—believed was feral, dangerous power.
Leena, like Dolph himself, had been born to the old magic. For the Order to bring her to the bridge meant only one thing—they knew what she was. And they were going to use the Brink to destroy her affinity. To destroy her.
He wouldn’t let that happen.
Dolph watched as the hired cab carrying Leena turned beyond the terminal, toward the entrance for vehicles crossing the bridge. “I’ll go on foot,” he said. “You stay here. To keep watch.”
“You sure?” Nibs asked.
“We can’t chance alerting them.” There would be no way to hide if they followed by carriage, but on the walkway above they might be able to surprise them, maybe have a chance to save Leena. “They’ll have to wait to pay their toll. It will be easy enough for me to catch up.”
“But with your leg,” Nibs said. “I could—”
He cut Nibs a deadly look. “My leg’s never stopped me from doing what needs done. You’ll stay here, as I said. If I’m not back before their carriage appears again, go warn the others. If this goes badly, the Order may be coming for them all.” He stared at Nibs, trying to convey the weight of the moment.
Nibsy’s eyes widened a bit. “You’ll be back,” Nibs told him. “You’ll bring Leena back.”
Dolph was glad for the assurance, but he wasn’t going to depend on it. Pulling his cap low over his eyes, he began to walk in the direction of the terminal. He ignored the stiffness in his leg, as he always did, and lifted himself up the wide steps that led to the entrance of the bridge. Once he was above, he kept away from the thin columns of lamplight on the planks of the walkway. Using the shadows for cover, he moved quickly despite his uneven gait—he’d lived with it for so long now that it was part of him.
The hired carriage was pulled to a stop before the first tower of the bridge—just beyond the shoreline. Below, three figures emerged. One reached back to pull out the fourth. Even from that distance, he knew it was Leena. He sensed her affinity—familiar, warm, his. But she was hanging limply between her captors. He felt the weakness of her magic, too, and when he got closer, he saw what they had done to her, saw her bruised face and bloodied lip. Saw her flinch with a ragged exhale and struggle against the men as they started to pull her toward the tower, toward the Brink.
His blood went hot.
Dolph, like every other Mageus in the city, knew what would happen when a person with the old magic crossed that line. Once they stepped across the Brink, it drained them. If the person was lucky and their affinity was weak—closer to a talent than a true power—they might survive, but they’d be left permanently broken from that missing part of themselves and would spend the rest of their life suffering the loss.
But for most, the Brink left them hollowed out, destroyed. Often, dead. So he understood what it would do to Leena, who was one of the most powerful Mageus he’d ever known.
Keeping to the shadows, he calculated his chances of getting Leena away from the men. He could take one down easily enough, even with his leg as it was, and the poisoned blade in his cane could do well enough on the other, but the third? There wasn’t time to go back for Nibs, not that the boy would be much help in a fight.
“Hold her up, boys,” the leader of the three said. “I want to see the fear in her eyes—filthy maggot.”
The two men pulled Leena upright and one gave her a sharp smack across the cheek.
Dolph’s blood pulsed, his anger barely leashed. But he forced himself to stay still, to not rush in and ruin his one chance of freeing her.
Still, seeing another man touch her, harm her . . . His knuckles ached from his grip on his cane. To hell with destroying the Brink. He would destroy them all.
He crept through the shadows until he was almost directly above them.  Already he could feel the cold energy of the Brink. Unlike natural magic, which felt warm and alive, the Brink felt like ice. Like desolation and rot. It was perverse magic, power corrupted by ritual and amplified by the energy it drained. And like all unnatural magic, it came with a cost.
This close, every ounce of his being wanted to turn and flee. This close, he could feel how easily everything he was could be taken from him. But he wouldn’t let anyone touch her like that again.
The man who spoke lifted Leena’s head by her hair. “There you are,” he said with a laugh when she opened her left eye to look at him. Her right eye was swollen shut. “Do you know what’s about to happen to you, pigeon? I bet you do. I bet you can feel it, can’t you?” The man laughed. “It’s what maggots like you and your kind deserve.”
Leena’s eye closed. Not a betrayal of weakness, Dolph knew, but to gather her strength.
That’s my girl, Dolph thought as Leena muttered a foul curse. Then she opened her unbruised eye and spit in the man’s face.
The man reacted instantly. His hand flew out, and Leena’s head snapped backward at the force of the blow.
Dolph was already moving. He hoisted himself up onto the railing and busted the streetlamp with the end of his cane. Like prey that sensed a hunter nearby, the men below went still as the light went out, listening intently for the source of the disturbance.
“What are you waiting for?” the leader shouted, breaking their wary silence, but his voice had an edge of nerves to it that wasn’t there before. “Drag her over.”