Steel's Edge Read Online Free PDF Page A

it consumed her, then she would do it. It was wrong and evil. She knew it, but she was so worn down and her emotional wounds were too raw. She wasn’t sure how long she could hold out. She had to disappear someplace away from bluebloods, Adrianglia, and Elvei.
    Her memory served up a half-forgotten incident from many years ago when she had been called to heal a group of soldiers. She recalled feeling a strong magic boundary, an invisible wall that seemed to sever their world, and watching the soldiers come through it, one by one, their faces twisted by pain. She spoke to one of them while sealing his wounds. He told her they belonged to the Mirror, a secret counterespionage agency. They had been traveling outside their world, the man had said, in a place where magic was weak. He called it the Edge. The man had been delirious, and she would’ve dismissed him if she hadn’t sensed the invisible wall rising like a barrier of pressurized magic.
    In this Edge, a place of weak magic, the pull of the darkness might be weaker too, so even if it managed to get the upper hand, she would do less harm.
    The real question was, could she find it?
    *   *   *
    Ã‰LÉONORE Drayton leaned back in her rocking chair and sipped the iced tea from a tall glass shaped like the center of a daffodil. The spring sun warmed the porch. Éléonore smiled, cozy in all of the layers of her torn clothes. She had been feeling every single one of her 109 years lately, and the heat felt so nice.
    Beyond the lawn, a road ran into the distance, and on the other side, the Edge woods rose, dense, nourished by magic. The air smelled of fresh leaves and spring flowers.
    Next to her, Melanie Dove, herself no spring chicken, raised her glass to the light and squinted at it. The sun caught a thin gold thread spiraling inside the glass walls. “Nice glasses. They from the Weird?”
    â€œMhhm. Keeps the tea cold with magic.” The glasses worked even here, in the Edge, where the magic wasn’t as strong. It didn’t keep the ice from melting indefinitely as the note with it promised, but it lasted a good five to six hours, and, really, who couldn’t drink a glass of tea in five hours?
    â€œThe grandkids got it for you?”
    Ã‰léonore nodded. The glasses came by a special courier, straight from Adrianglia in a box with Earl Camarine’s seal on it, the latest in the stream of presents. Rose, the oldest of her grandchildren, had picked them out and written a nice note.
    â€œWhen are you going to move there?”
    Ã‰léonore raised her eyebrows. “Trying to get rid of me?”
    â€œPlease.” The other witch shook her gray head. “Your granddaughter married a loaded blueblood noble, your grandsons have been after you for months to move, but you sit here like a chicken on a compost heap. In your place, I’d be gone.”
    â€œThey have their own lives, I have mine. What am I going to do there? The boys are in school all day. George is thirteen, Jack’s eleven, and Rose has her own marriage to worry about. I don’t even have a place of my own there. Here I have two houses.”
    â€œEarl Camarine will buy you a house. He lives in a castle, woman.”
    â€œI’ve never taken anyone’s charity, and I’m not about to start now.”
    â€œWell, in your place, I would go.”
    â€œWell, you’re not in my place, are you?”
    Ã‰léonore smiled into her tea. They had been friends for fifty years, and for the entire half century, Melanie had been telling anyone and everyone what they should have done with their lives. Age only made her more blunt, and she hadn’t been all that subtle to begin with.
    Truth was, she missed them. Rose, George, and Jack, she missed her grandbabies so badly, her chest ached sometimes at the memories. But she didn’t belong in the Weird, Éléonore reflected. She’d gone to visit and would likely go