Kami glanced at Angela. She was already awake, uncurling from under her blanket, blinking sleep from her eyes. She looked vulnerable for a moment, in the brief confusion between waking and sleeping.
Kami did not know which of them should go and which should stay. She wanted to help Jared, but she could not abandon her father and her brothers when her brothers were being hunted, when they were so entirely vulnerable. She was almost certain none of Rob’s men would kill Jared.
Almost certain was not entirely certain.
She sat there, fists clenched and body frozen, and they heard a slamming of fists against the door. Kami jumped at the sound, echoing through the house, and Ash hurtled from the doorway down the hall. Kami and Angela ran into the hall as Ash flung the front door open and Jared burst in. He was bloodstained and wrecked, a shining thread of red leading down from his temple. His shirt was torn and bloody as well, with a large rip in the back, and one of his elbows was as raw as the skin on his knuckles.
“Jared, what happened to—” Kami began, but Jared cut her off.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. He didn’t even look at her, and that sent prickles of unease down her spine. She saw his eyes were fixed on Angela, and it was suddenly hard to breathe through the fear. “We have to go now.”
Ash was the only one who looked confused, still worried about Jared. “Why are you—”
“Ash,” Jared interrupted. “What is the one thing that would bring your father the most power?”
Ash went white as he answered: “A willing sacrifice.”
Holly volunteered to stay behind. The Lynburns all had to go, the ones who Rob would not kill, and Kami had to go because she had the most magic. They could not leave the boys unprotected, though. They had to leave a sorcerer to guard them.
Kami saw the look Holly gave Angela, knew how much it cost her not to insist on going too. There was nothing Kami could do about it. There was nothing Kami could do at all, except try to get to Rusty as fast as possible.
There were no glowing foxes in the woods in the early morning. The sky was dark and slowly lightening, like ink being gradually diluted with water. They had run through these woods before, but never so silently, never so desperately.
The trees were whispering wildly, boughs crackling above them, the winds running as fast as the wolves. The woods were in turmoil, and Kami felt the buffeting wind and tumult of leaves as if they were at sea.
A loud clear call sounded once, and then again, like thunder coming from the earth rather than the sky. Except, Kami realized, that the sound was not coming from the earth. It was coming from the river.
From river to sky the peals echoed. It was a toll, warning and despairing. It was the sound of Elinor Lynburn’s bells, sunk beyond finding five hundred years ago.
Then it all stopped.
It was as though the whole world had shifted a degree. The air pressed down heavier, the shadows flattened the landscape, and nothing in all the once-wild woods moved. Light had been streaking across the sky but now it was dull. In no more than a moment, their town had become a still and silent land: no longer really their town at all.
Kami did not stop running. She could not bear to stop running. They all ran up the road to Aurimere and around the bend until they reached the manor house.
The fire was not raging around the manor. It was a soft peaceful day now, clouds muffling the sun. The whole sky was muted.
They had taken the stone slab that Jared had been tortured on when his magic was bound in the crypt of Aurimere, in the very heart of the house. They had brought the slab out and laid it before the golden manor, on the highest part of the hill overlooking their town.
Jared’s blood was still on the stone, mingled with older blood that had sunk in, the stain part of the very stone. There was fresh blood shining on it now, the only bright thing in a gray world.
Rusty’s face was turned toward them. His eyes were shut as if he was just resting quietly, having one of his naps. As if it was an ordinary day. There were marks of pain on his face, but no anger and no fear. He looked a little sad.
She could see the rest of what they had done to him, the evil fools. They had tied his hands, Rusty who could fight better than anyone in town, who had carefully taught her to defend herself from anything. Nobody’s face was marked with bruises, nobody was limping or otherwise hurt. He had let them do it. He had been an irresistible offering, a willing sacrifice. He hadn’t fought them, and they hadn’t needed to tie his hands, but they had done it because they could.
There were other people standing there, Rob’s sorcerers and a handful of townsfolk. Kami looked at their scared, sick faces. Alison Prescott, Holly’s mother, was crying. So was Amber.
Rob Lynburn was standing before the stone slab, with his brown muscular arms bared and the great golden Lynburn knife coated with scarlet in his hands. In this moment, all masks were off. Rusty looked like what he had always been, and Rob looked like what he was too. His face was rapt with evil delight.
“This is the inevitable end of all struggles against a greater power. This comes every turn of the year, every season, if the sorcerer chooses,” Rob said. “Every breath you take is by my mercy, a sign of your lord’s graciousness. I took my death, in recompense for the winter price this sorry town failed to offer me. I was given this death at the year’s awakening, as is my due. Finally, all has been set right.”
Angela threw herself at Rob like a dagger flying for his throat.
The air itself slowed, held Angela like a dragonfly suspended in amber. Rob strolled forward casually and laid his knife against her throat. The blood from the knife smeared on Angela’s skin, as if it was jam on a butter knife.
“Don’t move, little source,” said Rob. “Or she dies with her brother.”
Kami froze.
“Nobody else has to die today,” said Rob. He turned around, arms up, as if he was expecting a cheer to rise from the crowd. The bloody knife was still in his hand. All he received was a great rush of silence. “But you came here to interfere with the sacrifice offered to me. There is a price to be paid for that.”
Kami spoke through stiff lips. There did not seem enough air left in the world to breathe, let alone speak. “What price?”
Rob must know that she had lied before. He would ask her to break the link with Ash, and that would mean the ceremony of the pools would not work. Their last hope would be gone.
Kami did not feel panic at the thought. She felt empty, desolate as the gray sky, quiet past the point of misery. It seemed almost reasonable that hope would die too.
“What would any man want, with the world at his feet, but someone to share it with? I want my wife.”
“No,” snapped Jared, and took a furious step forward. Ash said nothing, but Kami felt the flare of determination behind the walls in her mind. He stepped up too, standing at Jared’s shoulder, having his back.
Rob’s eyes traveled contemptuously past Jared, over his shoulder, and fixed on his wife’s face.
“Lillian,” he said. “Will you come?”
“If I do, you will let every one of them go?” asked Lillian, and stared ferociously at Rob. Kami knew Lillian well enough by now to know that she was deliberately not looking at anyone, unwilling to betray that she had weaknesses.
“Lillian,” said Kami’s dad. “You don’t have to.”
Kami saw the look on Rob’s face when he heard that. She had a single terrible moment when she thought she would have to act, would have to choose whether to save Angela or her father.
“Shut your mouth.” Lillian’s voice was more cutting than Kami had ever heard it, like a whip handled in expert hands. It was either a Lynburn’s scornful outrage or a desperate plea for him to be quiet. “I am so tired of hearing you babble to your betters on subjects you know nothing about.”
Rob’s tensed muscles visibly eased,
and a smug smile spread across his face.
Lillian turned her salt-white face to her husband. “I assume I do have to, if I want them to live?”
“I would prefer to think of it as you seeing the cleverest and most reasonable course of action to take. You are my lady. You should be second in this town only to me, and all should bow their insolent heads to you.”
“All should bow their insolent heads to me,” said Lillian. “That’s true.”
Rob wasn’t stupid. He saw what Lillian was implying. But he laughed, gently. It seemed bizarre and grotesque, seeing the two Lynburns bicker over a body. But Kami saw Lillian’s hand clenching into a fist at her side, knuckles whiter than her face. She had to trust that Lillian was playing for all of their lives.
“I always admire your spirit, Lillian,” Rob said. “Even though I find the display of your spirit often so stupid. Are you going to be smarter now?”
“Are you going to let them all go?”
“Go, go,” said Rob, and waved a benevolent hand. “All of you can go about your business now. All of you can rest easy in your beds. Order has been restored to Sorry-in-the-Vale. You may depart, safe in the certainty of a true sorcerer’s peace.”
He waved a hand negligently at Angela, who sagged, gasping, as if she was a fish held on an invisible hook. Jon Glass stepped up to Angela and took her hand, caressed it and would not let it go. He held her back and drew her away, not letting her lunge again or stumble as she went.
Rob did not deign to notice what any of his defeated foes were doing. He held out a hand to Lillian, a gesture less of affection than command.
Lillian reached out and took it.
They walked, the golden pair, the lord and lady followed by their retinue, into Aurimere.
Enough of Rob’s people stayed behind so that Kami knew they had to go, and go quickly. Any one of them could be a victim of Rob’s malice, even if he had already taken his sacrifice.
She could not go, though, not quite yet.
She stepped up to the stone dais. She refused to look at the ruin that was Rusty’s body. She looked only at him.
Kami used the edge of her sleeve to clean the blood from his dear face, until it was untouched, until she could tell herself he looked as if he was only sleeping, as if he might wake soon. She smoothed back his hair with a tender hand, light as though she could wake him, and bent down and kissed his cold brow.
“Sleep well, sweetheart,” she whispered.
She hated to abandon him there on that cold stone, but she did it. She turned and walked the long road down.
All the words that I utter,
And all the words that I write,
Must spread out their wings untiring,
And never rest in their flight. …
—William Butler Yeats
Chapter Nineteen
The Boundless Deep
They went back to the Prescotts’ farmhouse. Kami had thought Angela might not go, but she came back with them, walking silently. It made sense. How could she return to the place where she and Rusty had lived? Angela had never gone away to be alone before, not really. She had always had someone to go home to.
Angela did not speak to any of them, all the long walk home. She did not even let Kami walk near her, outstripping Kami effortlessly when Kami tried. She had let Kami’s dad keep her hand, for a little while, but then tore it from his grasp as if his sympathy burned her.
Once they were at the house, Angela headed for the bedroom farthest away from the others, as far away from everyone as she could get. But she had still chosen to go home with them. Kami hesitated and then followed after her in a rush, shutting the door behind her hastily.
“I understand if you want to be alone,” Kami said quickly. “I just want you to know that you don’t have to be, that you never have to be. I want you to know how much I want to be here for you and oh, God, how sorry I am.”
Angela stood across the room, by the bed. Her eyes were like holes burned in a sheet.
“I’m sure you are sorry,” Angela said slowly. “You should be sorry. Would any of this ever have happened if you hadn’t had the burning urge to know every damn thing that wasn’t your business, if you hadn’t decided that you were on some kind of stupid crusade? Everyone told you to stop, but you wouldn’t listen. You were so sure you knew best.”
“Was I wrong?” Kami whispered.
“I don’t care if you were wrong or right. I don’t care about good and evil. You’re the one who made all this some kind of story, and it never has to be real for you. Your Lynburns will protect you. But they didn’t protect him. You wanted to have your stupid adventure, and you got him killed. All I care about is that my brother is dead and it’s your fault!”
Angela stopped speaking, panting. She looked despairing and exhilarated at once, looked as if she’d needed to punch someone in the face and done this instead.
Kami felt lashed by the words. She opened her mouth to shout that she had suffered too, that her mother was gone, beyond all real chance of recovery. But there was that faint hope, the thread that Kami was clinging to. She didn’t know what would happen, what she would do, if that thread broke and she fell. She didn’t know how Angela felt, and she could not stop fearing that she would.
She didn’t shout. She didn’t want to hurt Angela any more than she was already hurt.
“We could stop, if that’s how you feel about it,” she said in a low voice. “Rob Lynburn can do what he wants. He doesn’t need us anymore. He’s not going after my … he might leave us alone. He doesn’t have any of our tokens. He could rule or destroy the whole town, and we could—let him. We could run away. He might not try to stop us. He might just let us go. We could go far away from here, and never know what happens next to anyone in Sorry-in-the-Vale. We could stop fighting and forget it all.”
She looked up at the end of the speech to see Angela arrested, somehow, caught in a startled moment with her mouth open and her tear-wet eyes wide. She looked at a loss with her anger taken from her, even briefly. She looked young and terrified of feeling anything else.
“You’re lying,” she said in a hard, sullen voice. “You won’t stop. You never do.”
“That’s right. That’s who I am. I won’t stop for anybody … but I will for you,” said Kami. She wasn’t sure if it was right, or okay to say, but nothing was right anymore. She told the truth. “You’re my sister.”
“I’m nobody’s sister anymore!”
Angela screamed the words. It made Kami think of the way the wind had howled, the sound of a world being torn to pieces.
Kami could do nothing but throw clumsy words at all of Angela’s pain, move forward with her hands held out, knowing that words and arms were so little comfort it was almost laughable.
“You don’t have to be my sister, and I know it doesn’t make up for anything, but I’m yours, I’m yours. I love you and I won’t stop loving you even if you hate me, I won’t leave you, I won’t want to, nothing you ever do or say will ever make me turn away from you. And that’s family, it is, it has to be.”
Angela could not back away any further. Kami had always been the one who took the extra steps, acted and dragged Angela in her wake, from the time that they were both twelve, when Angela was the new girl who hated everyone and Kami had refused to be hated and insisted on friendship.
Kami hesitated now. She didn’t know if she would be welcome. If what Angela wanted was for her to be different, to give up, then Kami did not know what a different person would do for Angela. She tried to imagine being a better person, who could be better for her friend.
She was here, and she loved Angela. She did not know how to be any better than that, be the person who loved Angela, as hard as she could.
Kami took a step toward Angela, and then another. Angela sat on the bed, in the corner, with her head bowed. She did not make a mov
e in Kami’s direction or away from her. When Kami took Angela’s hands in hers, they were cold.
Angela’s hands were limp in Kami’s for a moment, and then they clutched far too tight. Her grip was icy and strong, like the grip of a hand in a nightmare, breaking through a grave. Kami tried to chafe some warmth into her fingers, and Angela slipped free and clutched at her sleeves, at her shirt, got a handful of her hair. She grabbed at her like someone drowning, and as she did, she began to sob.
“I’m sorry,” Kami whispered. “I’m sorry, it’s so bad, there’s nothing I can do to make it right. But I love you and I’m here.”
“And we give up if I say?” Angela’s voice was choked with tears, like a river choked with leaves.
“We give up.”
“And if I say we go after them, we kill them all, we wipe them out? If I tell you that we have to make them pay for what they did?”
“Then we will do that together,” Kami said, into Angela’s tumbled hair. “I swear.”
Angela let out a wail, a terrible sound torn out of her throat, one that made Kami’s own throat ache in sympathy. It was true what she had said, there was no action she could take, no way to make this right. The only thing she could do, in all the world, was be there.
Angela’s arms went slowly around her waist, and they sat locked together, until Angela’s wild sobbing was muffled, finally, against Kami’s shoulder.
Angela collapsed with exhaustion at last, after the storm of tears. Kami staggered out of the room feeling as if she had been in a fight, her body aching as though she had been beaten, but not feeling as if she could ever collapse. She hated the thought of even closing her eyes. She had to do something. She found a little room where she thought Hugh Prescott had done his accounts, with a kitchen chair and a workbench that he seemed to have used as a table, with paper and pens on it. Some of the paper had sums scratched on it, some of them crossed out, as if Holly’s dad had not been able to make the numbers work the way he wanted them to.
Unmade (The Lynburn Legacy Book 3) Page 23
