Untold

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  “You can’t open the door,” she said in a rush. “There’s an alarm spell, and a spell on the lock as well. Two different sorcerers did the spells. You can’t concentrate on opening the door, because you’ll set off the alarm. And if you concentrate on silencing the alarm, you won’t be able to open the door.”

  “Won’t I?” Jared asked. “You’re forgetting I’m a delinquent.” He concentrated on the alarm spell and reached forward, stomach lurching as his mother shied away from him and stared at him with wide horrified eyes. “I would never hurt you,” Jared whispered, and slid the earring out of her ear.

  He unwound the wire and slotted it into the lock, listening for the click of the lock giving, the satisfaction of the handle turning under his palm. The door fetched up against an obstruction: Jared put his shoulder to it, hard, and heard wood splinter. The door swung open; splinters the size of daggers lay scattered across the floor.

  Jared slanted a look over at his mother. “Look, Mom. Just like magic.” He stepped over the splinters and stood by the gauze-draped bed. Aunt Lillian lay there unconscious. Her face was slack and defenseless, robbed of character.

  Jared heard the sound of an indrawn breath and turned to see his mother at the doorway.

  “She looks like me,” his mother murmured. It seemed an absurd thing to say about her identical twin, but Jared looked at Aunt Lillian, so terribly vulnerable, and saw what she meant.

  He also saw Aunt Lillian’s fists, closing on the material of the bedclothes, trying to fight her way out of unconsciousness. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he said, walking over to the bed and pulling Aunt Lillian up into his arms. “You two look nothing alike.”

  Aunt Lillian was tall, and had some muscle, and her body was limp with unconsciousness: she was rather a heavy armful. But Jared found himself tucking his chin protectively on the top of her head. It didn’t matter that the muscles in his arms burned holding her. She was a welcome weight.

  “You’re very strong,” his mother murmured. “Like your father.”

  “Which father would that be?” Jared asked. It was a casual enough question, meant only as an insult flung back at her in return. But his mother looked at him silently, her lips parted, and it became more than that.

  “Oh well.” Jared would have shrugged if not for the burden of Aunt Lillian. “If you don’t know, I guess I never will.”

  “Rob wants you,” she said again.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jared told her. “I don’t want him.” He walked toward the door carrying Aunt Lillian. His mother retreated before him, her eyes wary as the eyes of an animal that has been incessantly hurt and cannot trust again.

  “You don’t need him either,” Jared said. The words burst out of his throat. “Come on, Mom. Come with us. That’s all you need to do. Just leave him: just walk away.”

  His mother shook her head, and it seemed to Jared that perhaps she couldn’t leave: perhaps so much of her had grown around Rob that she would have to tear herself away and break in the process.

  “All right,” he said. “Tell me where Tenri Glass is.”

  His mother shook her head again, but this time it was instant and vehement. “No. Rob would be furious.”

  “And he won’t be furious about Lillian?”

  “You don’t understand,” she said. Her voice echoed down the corridor in a way that made chills run down Jared’s spine.

  “You’re all mixed up about that girl,” his mother continued. “You always were. You were forever insisting that she was real.”

  “You swore to me that she wasn’t.”

  “I was telling you the truth!” His mother’s eyes glowed, the eyes of something hunted in a wood. “She isn’t real. You have to see that. The people who can’t do magic, who aren’t connected to the earth, they aren’t real. Not the way we are.”

  Jared looked into her eyes and said, “She was always more real to me than you.” If he hadn’t had Kami in his head to turn to, he wondered, would he have turned to his mother? Would she have loved him, if he had?

  “Where’s Ten?” he asked. “I’m coming back for him. The only thing you can do is help me not get caught when I do.”

  His mother trembled.

  “Or do you want me to get caught?” Jared asked.

  “No,” his mother said, the word less than a breath. “I want you safe. The child is in the attic.”

  “Thank you,” Jared said. He walked down the corridor with Aunt Lillian cradled in his arms. He left his mother behind.

  His tread walking down the stairs was heavier, and the shadows could scarcely wrap around both of them. Jared was sure someone would hear, or see, but he kept walking and no one did. He walked into the Aurimere garden and out through the fire again: it parted easily as if it was glad to have them free. And then they were past the fire and away from Aurimere, safe in the cool dark.

  Jared laid Aunt Lillian on the ground. Her hair spread out like a river, locks forming silver tributaries in the dark grass. She stirred and muttered something, sounding imperious and lost at once.

  “God, Aunt Lillian, you idiot,” Jared said, stooping over her and brushing back the hair from her face. “What did you think you were doing?”

  She lay there, silent and safe. Jared settled shadow over her like a blanket and turned back to the leaping flames, leaving her hidden in the friendly dark.

  * * *

  Aurimere was less welcoming this time, as if the house was angry he had been stupid enough to return. The reflection of the fire cast evil red glints on the glass, as if behind every window there were watching eyes narrowed in laughter. Jared touched the walls as he went by apologetically. The firelight made them look like real gold.

  He went to the same door, slipped up the same stairs, but this time when he reached the second floor he kept going. The next flight of stairs was dark and familiar to him: when he touched the banister, he felt the carving in the wood that formed flowers in running water, twined in a drowning woman’s hair.

  Jared had to open a few doors before he found the stairs that led to the attic: he had not gone up there often. The door that led up to the attic was painted white. It had a round doorknob.

  The ordinary door actually gave Jared pause, but he did not pause for long. He walked up the fragile wooden stairs, and when his foot hit a step he called on the air to muffle the creak. He called the darkness to wrap around him.

  Shadow and silence, silence and shadow, every step. Nobody would see or hear him coming.

  When he reached the attic, he looked around and saw oriel windows that the moonlight was shining directly through. They looked like huge pearls, softly glowing in the dark walls.

  For a moment everything seemed to be shadows and silence, and Jared thought he had been wrong. Then he heard the low murmur of Rob’s voice and knew that his mother had betrayed him after all.

  He walked through the dark, toward the sound of Rob Lynburn speaking. He opened one door, begging the hinges to stay quiet, and crossed a dark room. There was light seeping in from the cracks of the closed door across the room. Electric light, slipping easy and yellow as butter under the door, and the murmur of Rob’s low pleasant voice. Jared would have liked to fight him, but there was Ten to think of. He had to wait Rob out.

  “I thought you would be pleased,” his mother’s voice said.

  Jared concentrated on the door, pleading for quiet, begging with the air not to carry sound, and it swung silently open, just a few crucial inches. There was furniture in the room beyond, swathed in white sheets. It looked like an entire sofa set had died and been wrapped in shrouds.

  He looked around the door and saw Rob standing over his mother, so much taller than her that he appeared to be looming. Neither of them was looking at the door.

  Jared took a chance. He pulled the shadows close, so close that the darkness faded and moonlight spread into the corners of the empty room where he stood, and he could hardly see. He went down low and crossed, in two swift steps, to behind
the shrouded couch.

  Once crouched down there, he told himself he was an idiot. His mother had told Rob where he was headed. She had not given a second thought to betraying him. He should not dream of trying to help her.

  “There’s just one thing I don’t understand, Rosalind,” Rob said. He put a hand against her throat, gently turning her face up to his. “When exactly did you see Jared?”

  The lightbulbs in this room were not shaded but set in clear glass casements, and the naked electric light sheened his mother’s lashes with gold. It seemed like a gold shutter obliterated the color of her eyes for a moment as she blinked. “I—I don’t understand.”

  “Before he took Lillian?” Rob inquired. “Or after he took her? She’s my wife. She’s valuable. You should have known that the thing to do was instantly raise an alarm.”

  “He would have fought,” Jared’s mother said with commendable speed. “He’s unstable. I’ve told you that. I thought you wouldn’t want to risk your sorcerers, I thought it would be better to catch him by surprise.”

  “You thought it would be better to lose Lillian than risk sorcerers who aren’t even Lynburns?” Rob asked. He was caressing his mother’s tumbled hair, hands and voice steady, kind. “Oh, Rosalind,” he said. “Try again.”

  She retreated back into the safe territory of incomprehension. “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Rob told her. The tone of his voice was so reassuring. “Rosalind. Fool me once . . . and you did, didn’t you? Now you’ve let me down again. The others, they’re mistaken, they’re being stupid, but at least when they see the light I’ll know I can trust them. How can I fight with you at my back when you might change your mind at any time, Rosalind? How can I trust you? I simply can’t.”

  His voice was like a lullaby. It was hard to make out the actual words and not respond to the tone: Jared saw his mother straining in toward Rob, face open and eager to make it up to him. “You can,” she assured him. “Rob, I’m sorry. I love you. You have to believe me. I love you. I love you.”

  “Shhh,” said Rob. He laid his cheek against her shining hair. “Hush now. I believe you. I do.” Jared hardly saw him move, in the shadowed space between their two bodies. He was aware of Rob’s hand going to his belt, but it seemed like a meaningless gesture until he saw Rob’s arm go back, saw the clean purposeful thrust. “I have only ever loved one woman,” Rob told her gently. “And it wasn’t you.”

  His mother drew in a startled, shuddering breath.

  “You’re no use to me, Rosalind,” Rob explained, still kind and reasonable. He drew out one of the Lynburn daggers, its gold blade drowned in slick blood, and stepped back, letting Jared’s mother slide to the ground.

  It had all happened so fast that Jared had not quite believed it was happening. Now it was done, and he had not done a thing.

  There was blood spreading across his mother’s torso, turning the pale material of her dress dark. His mother’s cheek was resting against the floorboards, and their gazes met. The light was dying in her eyes, a candle guttering under one last too-violent breath.

  Her outflung hand was lying under the sofa. Jared reached out to touch it, he hardly knew why, to save her when it was too late to save her or to comfort her when he’d never been able to comfort her.

  They had never been able to save each other.

  He could not quite reach: their fingers did not quite meet.

  She breathed once more, the sound halting and sticky. She did not breathe again. Her eyes were still open, staring at Jared, but they were dull as glass with the light gone out behind it.

  Jared crouched on the floor looking into his dead mother’s eyes, until the sofa crashed into the farthest wall.

  “Hello, son,” said Rob.

  Jared didn’t get to his feet: he just hurled a handful of air at Rob, like a storm thrown from his palms.

  Rob did not even raise a hand. He just glanced at the air and it obeyed him instead. He had Lynburn blood on one of the Lynburn daggers. His mouth shaped a faint sneer. “Really, Jared,” he said. “Be more intelligent.”

  But Jared had something else. He had a strand of Rob’s hair, found in his hairbrush at Aurimere, saved for this occasion. “Noli me tangere,” said Jared, and his spell knocked Rob across the room.

  It gave him enough time to run, and he ran. He ran for the attic door and blasted it open with a spell. Ten Glass sprang up, pieces of door scattering at his feet. He looked so small, wide-eyed and terrified, and Jared was so scared he would fail him.

  “Ten,” he said, “get out of the house, get to my Aunt Lillian. Go fast. Go now!”

  Ten stared at him for another instant and then obeyed, charging past Jared and Rob, making for the stairs.

  Rob was already on his feet. He lunged for Ten, and Jared launched himself at him, feeling the strand of hair go up in smoke in his hand.

  Rob sneered. “What are you going to do now?”

  “I’m sure I’ll think of something,” Jared said between his teeth, and lunged for Rob’s dagger.

  He grabbed the blade, slicing open his palm and knowing his blood was mingling with his mother’s, still warm on the cold gold. He gripped the dagger and threw himself at Rob again, knocking him back, not caring about keeping his own balance. They hit the floor. Rob used his weight to pin Jared to the ground. Rob was bigger and stronger. He grabbed Jared’s free wrist and Jared could feel the power behind his grip, trying to wrench his arm out of its socket.

  Jared bared his teeth at him in a grimace and sank the dagger into Rob’s shoulder. It was all he could reach. His stomach turned at the sound and sensation of the blade cutting through a body, through gristle and meat.

  Rob had put this knife through his mother. Jared sank it in up to the hilt, and twisted.

  Rob let a pained hiss leak out between his locked teeth, his big heavy body suddenly heavier on Jared’s. Then he got in Jared’s face and pressed a kiss on his cheek. “My boy,” he breathed into his ear. “Who knew Rosalind would be the one who had my real heir? Nothing stops you, does it? And you already have the taste for blood.”

  “Whose boy I am seems to be up for debate,” Jared remarked breathlessly, tugging at the blade. There was so much blood on his hands, it was difficult.

  “Oh, look at you,” Rob murmured. “A real Lynburn. You breathe and the house listens. If I’d had the raising of you instead of Ash, I know what you’d be. I don’t have any doubts.”

  Jared did not have any wish to hear about Ash’s inherent goodness, or think about how much better he would be for Kami. He felt dizzy with rage and the desire to shut Rob up. The world was going black, splattered with scarlet.

  This wasn’t rage, he realized, his thoughts surfacing from drowning darkness. Rob was sucking the air out of his lungs. He was suffocating. “What do you want?” he gasped out.

  “You on my side,” Rob said. “You by my side.”

  Every breath cut Jared’s throat, as if he was swallowing razors. “Oh yeah. Sign me up for evil.” He grinned wildly up at Rob, even though his sight was going dark: Rob’s face dissolving away from him, everything turning formless and strange. “Give me a weapon and put me at your back. You can totally trust me. I swear.”

  He laughed, the sound almost a whine, and Rob laughed with him, full and hearty. Jared tried to get hold of the dagger, of his magic, of anything, but the world kept up its slow terrible slide away.

  “You don’t understand what I’m really doing yet. You don’t understand anything yet. But you will. All you need is a little training,” Rob said soothingly. “Like a horse. You simply need to be broken.”

  Jared twisted underneath Rob in one last desperate burst of strength, not fighting anymore, just trying to get away. He couldn’t. He was losing the fight; he was losing the world.

  Distantly, as if it was happening to someone else, he felt the dagger slip out of his hand. He felt Rob’s hand, still horribly gentle, stroking his hair.

  He hea
rd Rob’s voice, low in his ear.

  “I know just the place for you.”

  * * *

  Jared woke up with his legs jammed between a wall and his chest. His head was pounding, and his cheek was pressed against another cold wall. He felt himself gasping as he surfaced into consciousness, remembering suffocation even though his lungs were expanded again, air coursing through them as it should.

  The air smelled stale. It smelled of something else as well.

  He couldn’t focus on it. He couldn’t focus on anything, fire or earth, wood or water. He was trapped, in an enclosed space he didn’t know where, in a little pocket locked away from magic.

  Jared dragged in another breath of air and tried to force himself to be calm. His legs were trapped. He couldn’t move them, so he tried to move his arms.

  One of his elbows met stone. His other elbow met something else, something that felt like a coatrack: cloth and a frail structure behind it.

  Jared looked to his side, and felt the breath dry up in his throat.

  There was scarcely any light in the confined space. What light there was was faint but not dim enough that Jared couldn’t make out the shadowy form that sat beside him, back against the other wall, knee to knee with him, head bowed.

  There was so little light that everything looked gray, but Jared knew the fragile remains of the boy’s skin really were gray. His chin rested against his chest, but Jared could see the withered side of his cheek, the shadowed hollows of his eyes, or the sockets that might once have been his eyes.

  His clothes were worn and old, rotten in places but mostly preserved in that dry air. It was clothing from decades ago.

  The hair hanging in that drawn gray face was dry and pale, curling the way dead leaves curled, so pale it looked bone white in this light.

  It made Jared think of Holly’s blond curls. It made him think of Aunt Lillian.

  Edmund Prescott, the boy Lillian would have married. Except that he had run away when he was seventeen.

  He had disappeared, and left Rob to marry the heir of Aurimere.

  Jared wanted to scream, but he found himself just gasping dry air and staring down at his hands. There was so much blood on them, dark in the gray light. His own, his mother’s, Rob’s: there was no way to tell, and it didn’t seem to matter.