Silver Borne (Mercy Thompson, #5)

by Patricia Briggs

“I just can’t do it any longer,” he said, finally. “It’s better to go now, before I hurt someone.” I was too tired to put up with his garbage. “The hell you can’t. ‘Do not go gentle into that good night,’ Samuel. ‘Rage, rage against the dying of the light.’ ” He’d helped me memorize that poem when I was in high school. I knew he’d remember. “ ‘Life’s but a walking shadow,’ Mercy, ‘a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.’ ” He countered my Dylan Thomas with Shakespeare, spoken with as much weary bleakness as any stage actor ever managed. “ ‘It is a tale. Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying . . . nothing.’ ” He said the last word with a bite of bitterness. I was so angry I could have hit him. Instead, I clapped my hands in mock appreciation. “Very moving,” I said. “And stupid. Macbeth killed his overlord and followed his ambition, bringing misery and death to everyone involved. Your life is worth more, I think, than his was. More to me—and to every patient who crosses your path. Tonight, it was Adam and Ben.”