Unspoken

  Kami was so proud of her, and so sorry about what she had to tell her.

  “Angela,” she said. “Look behind you.”

  Angela and Ash both whirled around. The blood was still there, scarlet trails over stone. But Rob Lynburn was gone.

  Kami had only looked away for an instant. She had not considered how the wild power of the woods and a source’s blood might help a sorcerer heal.

  Angela took a deep breath and said, low and calm, keeping her grip on Ash and her chain, “We should run.”

  “You both run,” Kami told her. “Go get Jared and Lillian and Holly; they’re coming toward us. Find them and bring them here.”

  “Why can’t you come too?” Angela snapped.

  Kami saw fear under her anger for the first time. Angela was never, ever scared for herself. Kami looked at Ash’s face and saw he understood.

  Kami kept her voice steady. “Because the rock has closed in on me. Rob did it, and I’m trapped. I can hold him off, I’m a source, but you need to go get help. Angela, I trusted you, please trust me now. Please go.”

  Angela hesitated, then whirled around and left. She used her grip on Ash’s hand to help him as they scrambled out of the quarry, Angela more familiar with the terrain. She stood on the lip of the quarry and pulled him up to stand beside her with ease.

  Kami watched their heads, one dark and one bright, going into the woods, until they disappeared from her sight.

  Angela did not know Rob had spilled Kami’s blood with that knife. She did not know how weak Kami felt, trembling in her stone prison. She would be furious if she found out that Kami had made her leave when Kami could not defend herself, but Kami wanted to be sure Angela was safe.

  Kami drew in a slow shuddering breath, and reached out for comfort where she could always find it. I can hear him coming back, she told Jared. I’m scared.

  One of Rob Lynburn’s boots hit the heap of chains with a dull clang. Kami looked at him stepping over his own blood and shivered.

  Don’t be scared, Jared told her. He won’t touch you. I’m coming, and I’m going to kill him.

  Kami swallowed. Her breathing was so loud in this small space, hissing and furnace-hot, like the roar of a dragon in its cave. She was afraid Rob might hear. Kami turned her head as far as she could and looked at the dark stone instead of at Rob Lynburn. She turned her mind toward Jared. Come soon.

  The hollow closed in tighter on her, like a stone fist. Stone pressed against her back, her sides, and her face, cold against her lips. Its grip seemed to go right through her flesh and promise to grind her bones to powder. She could not help it: she let out a small, stifled sound of agony.

  Rob Lynburn made a soft, delighted noise. “Come out,” he called.

  Kami stayed where she was. The stone tightened around her. She did not know if she would be crushed or suffocated first. Jared’s cold, clear terror cut through the dark confusion of her brain.

  If she did not get out of here, she was going to die. She had to take her chances with Rob.

  “Come out,” Rob repeated. “Or be buried alive.”

  She tried to will the stone to open and free her, but she had no air and he had her blood. Kami made a small, strangled sound of assent. The stone grip released her, easing by just a fraction. She turned her face toward the light and began to drag herself out on her raw, bleeding hands and knees.

  Rob stood over her, smiling against the sun and looking like Jared’s dependable uncle. The knife was shining in his hand.

  Kami looked up at him, her vision hazy so his golden hair blurred with the autumn leaves. She cleared her throat and whispered, low and hoarse, every word painful: “I’ll cut the link.”

  Jared was running through the woods, trees and light going by in a blur. He could hear Holly and Aunt Lillian running after him, neither of them able to keep up. Holly was still shouting questions somewhere in his wake. Aunt Lillian had given up asking.

  Jared’s heart was louder in his ears than their footsteps or their voices. Most of him was with Kami, stone on all sides and closing in. He thought nothing would be able to stop him, and then Angela and Ash burst out of the trees.

  Angela’s hair was tangled with twigs and leaves. Her mouth was a snarl, and from one of her hands a knotted chain swung. She looked ready to use it. Her other hand was in Ash’s. He looked as if he had gone wild too, but wasn’t adapting to it as well as Angela. His face was distorted and marked with signs of tears.

  For a moment, they all stood staring at each other.

  Then Holly shattered the stillness by throwing herself at Angela. “God, Angie!” she exclaimed, arms locked around her neck. “What happened?”

  Angela started and went still, seemed about to say something and checked herself. Her face changed, the snarl dropping away. She dropped Ash’s hand and lifted her own hand to gently touch Holly’s bright hair.

  Ash looked very alone. Jared felt a presence at his elbow and glanced to see his aunt Lillian had drawn level with him. She had her eyes fixed on her son.

  “Yes, Ash,” she said, her voice horribly, ferociously calm. “What happened?”

  Ash swallowed and suddenly looked innocent, a storybook hero beholding horror in the woods. Jared wondered exactly how much practice he’d had looking innocent for his mother. Nicola Prendergast had died the night she asked Ash for help. Jared was prepared to bet that Ash had told his father.

  “Your husband is the one killing people,” Jared informed her flatly. “I’m guessing Ash knew it. And I don’t care which of our nest is the worst monster, because he has Kami. We have to get to the quarry now!”

  Angela’s eyes narrowed, the snarl returning. She looked eager to use that chain. Jared felt in perfect accord with her for the first time, and his lips curled in a silent snarl back.

  Then they were all running, Angela holding Holly’s hand and carrying her along with them, Ash and Lillian at their backs. And still most of Jared was with Kami, alone with a murderer and trying to make a bargain.

  Oh God, please don’t do it, he begged her. Please hold on. We’re coming.

  Kami spoke rapidly, ignoring her cracking voice, trying to replicate her usual reporter’s tones, sweeping someone into an interview with the force of sheer conviction. “That’s why you came to my house and told me I was the one who could break the connection. You’ve been recruiting sorcerers who you thought would agree with you about the best way to get power—you tried to recruit a stranger from London; why wouldn’t you want your own nephew? If I die, he dies. But you came to me and asked me to cut the link because you didn’t want him to die, and you didn’t want his powers to be chained to me. You want him free? I’ll free him.”

  Kami could see the sudden calculation in Rob’s eyes. He had to believe she had a reason for severing the connection.

  “I told you it was something I might want to do already, in my garden,” Kami went on. “I had no reason to lie. I might get magic out of the deal, but people shouldn’t be tied to each other like this. I don’t want either of us to be a parasite. I don’t want his voice in my head, his feelings running through me like a disease. I want to be my own separate self. I was thinking of cutting the connection anyway. I swear I’ll do it.” She stopped, out of breath, her throat one long, silent scream of pain.

  Jared was quiet in her head now. She’d had to be convincing, and truth was the most convincing thing of all. None of what she’d said she felt, none of what she’d said she wanted, had been a lie.

  “Do it right now,” Rob commanded her.

  Kami hesitated.

  “I would rather my nephew was dead than your slave,” Rob said. “And I am not waiting for you to recover and hurl your stolen magic at me.” He picked up Ash’s knife from off the quarry floor, smaller but with similar carvings on the hilt to the one in his hand. He offered it to Kami, blade first. “So do it now. Or I’ll free him by cutting your throat.”

  “I don’t understand what you want me to do!” Kami eyed the kn
ife and weighed her chances of fighting Rob with it. Nonexistent, she thought, with his strength and reach.

  “Take this,” Rob instructed her. “And do what I say.”

  Kami took the knife, holding it very lightly. Her hands wanted to shake, but she refused to let them. No matter how little chance she had of defending herself with this, it was a weapon, and she was not planning to let it go.

  “Do you see your shadow?” asked Rob.

  Kami looked up at him and remembered how she’d seen him look like a sorcerer in her garden. He had the same wild, powerful look about him, but now he looked vicious as well. There was blood in his hair and an open wound on his cheek. Someone had been able to hurt him, and that had maddened him: he wouldn’t feel in control again until he had hurt someone else.

  And here she was.

  Kami lifted her hands, the empty one and the one with the knife in it, saw how he tensed as she moved, and gave up the idea of a lunge. She obeyed him, finally, looking down at the quarry floor and the trembling dark shape of her own shadow. Her shadow was lying across the bloodstained stone, touching the chains.

  “Lay the knife at the tips of your fingers,” Rob commanded. “So close you can feel the blade against your skin. Then cut the shadow away.”

  Jared had been silent in her head. Now Kami turned her mind to his and let his thoughts and feelings flow through her. It was like being on a boat watching your homeland receding in the distance, seeing it for the last time under rain and thunderclouds.

  Kami, please, please wait just another moment, Jared begged. I’ll save you, and later I’ll be better, I’ll do anything you want, be anything you want me to be. Please don’t do it.

  His desperation and misery swept her up like a storm capturing the sea. She turned her mind to even these feelings, because they were his, like his terrified rage in the lift when they had first met, being wrapped in his arms in a cold well, being dazzled by his wonder at the woods and her home and her. Like being a child, awareness of him the morning chorus that woke her and the lullaby that sent her to sleep, his thoughts always her first and last song.

  I love you, Kami told him, and cut.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Nothing Gold

  The smoke Jared had created raced through the leaves ahead of them, spreading out dark tendrils. They were the shadows of retribution, coming for Rob Lynburn.

  It was the only thing Jared could think of: rage and retribution.

  And then Jared went down. The crash startled Angela and made her spin to one side and turn on him, chain clanking in her hand. Jared did not even care. He wished she would bring the chain down, beat him unconscious, and end the wrenching pain and echoing silence in his mind.

  “Easy, Angie,” Holly said. “Jared, what’s wrong?”

  Jared lay on his stomach, struggling to lift himself on his elbows. He could hear his breath rattling in his throat, a terrible uneven sound.

  “Where are you hurt?” Holly demanded, moving closer to him without letting go of Angela’s hand.

  “I’m not,” Jared began to lie, and then bowed his head, shoulders hunching in agony. He could taste earth, bitter between his lips. He could feel the woods, the whole world, twisting and going wrong around him. “It doesn’t matter! Get Kami.”

  Angela leaned down and looked into his face.

  Jared gritted his teeth and stared back. “I’ll catch up,” he promised, and dropped his head again. He made a pathetic sound, crying out like a dying animal. “Leave me!”

  Angela stood straight and said, “All right.”

  Behind her were Ash and Aunt Lillian. Jared was distantly amazed to see how concerned they looked, and furious that they seemed to have forgotten anything else was happening.

  “You want that scum to kill another girl?” Angela demanded. “I’m going.”

  “So am I,” Holly said.

  Angela began to run, Holly holding on to her hand, and Ash ran after them.

  Aunt Lillian stooped down and touched Jared’s hair. It was the strangest thing: only Kami had ever touched him like that before, so gently.

  “Go,” Jared snarled, and turned his face away.

  She did. She left him on the ground, struggling and failing to get up.

  Kami had not expected it to hurt. But it hurt worse than anything she had ever experienced in her life. She supposed through the haze of red agony that it made sense. This was surgery, after all, surgery of the soul or the mind or both at once. And she had done it to herself and to him. Worse than the pain was the sudden wrongness in her mind and in her bones, in every part of her.

  Silence filled Kami now, like the silence after words failed and someone stopped breathing. She was gasping, lost as a fish thrown onto dry earth, lying on her side on the chains and scrabbling on the rock trying to get up, because in spite of all this she knew what was coming.

  Rob Lynburn’s shadow fell on her, blotting out the sun. She could not see his face, only darkness, and the bright light of the knife as he brought it down. Only the blow never fell, because Rob staggered and had to catch at the quarry wall to keep his footing.

  “Rob,” said Rosalind Lynburn. “You can’t kill her.”

  “Rosalind!” Rob exclaimed furiously. “I asked you to go to the town and wait there.”

  Rosalind flinched away from his tone, even though she’d had the strength and conviction to hurl herself at him and force down his arm. Kami could see, suddenly, the ingrained habits of a lifetime. She saw how Rosalind might have chosen a violent man to take her away, because men who hurt her were the only ones she knew how to love.

  “I went to the town,” Rosalind murmured, her fair hair hanging like a veil before her face. “I did what you told me. Then I came back, and I’m sorry, but you can’t kill her!”

  Every muscle of Rob’s bloodied, wounded face went tight. Kami recognized, with a cold crawling feeling, that he had been crossed too many times today. She forced herself to sit up and pushed herself staggering to her feet. She still had the knife in her hand, even if all the magic in her was dead and lost.

  “That’s right,” said a voice at the lip of the quarry, a voice that was used to obedience without question. “You’re not going to kill her. You’re not going to kill anyone.”

  Lillian Lynburn cast a look at the loose rocks of the quarry, and they rolled to form rough steps. Behind Lillian, coming like an army of one, was Angela swinging a chain. Behind her came Holly, and then Ash.

  “Lillian, I’m your husband,” said Rob. “Listen to me.”

  “You’re a criminal,” Lillian told him. “You broke my laws, in my town, and I am going to execute you. Step away from my sister.”

  Rosalind shook her hair away from her face. It flew back like gossamer. Lillian held out a hand to her. Rosalind did not take it, but she did move toward her twin. A look passed between them like a spark, fire traveling from Lillian to light Rosalind’s eyes.

  Angela walked over to Kami and stood beside her like a guard. Holly came to stand at her other side, cupping Kami’s elbow. Kami had not realized how unsteady she was until she had some support.

  “Ash!” Rob bellowed.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Ash, and lifted his head. “Kami,” he said, “I know you’ll never forgive me. I can’t blame you. But I truly am so sorry.”

  Wind and dust rose behind Rob, a small storm but large enough to envelop them all.

  Lillian glanced at her sister and her son, and they both copied her as she lifted her hand. The storm dispersed, turning into dust motes that shone in the red light of the sinking sun.

  “Rosalind,” said Rob, “you would never betray me.”

  “If you kill her,” Rosalind said, her voice very low, “you kill Jared.”

  “You don’t understand,” Rob told her. “I knew you didn’t, I knew you couldn’t, or you would not have done this. I made her cut the connection. I would never allow harm to come to Jared. He’s free.”

  “Oh,” breathed Rosal
ind.

  “Enough!” snarled Lillian, and lunged for Rob. She moved so fast she almost had him, but he had his knife, and he struck without hesitating.

  Rosalind and Ash both screamed as the knife came down. The dust storm rose again, this time flying into Rob’s eyes, surrounding him. Angela dashed forward into the melee and hit Rob from the back with her chain. When the dust cleared, Lillian and Rob were circling each other. Lillian’s shirt was torn, a scarlet stain spreading down one side. But she had Rob’s knife.

  “Your parents’ son after all, aren’t you?” she asked, and spat at his feet.

  “And proud of it,” Rob snarled back. “I had such hopes for you, hopes that you’d understand. But I was deceived in you. I married the wrong sister. You are your parents all over again, those sanctimonious murderers.”

  Lillian grinned. Seeing her with her hair coming down was somehow stranger than seeing her bleed. “And proud of it.”

  Everyone was watching the confrontation. Kami was as fascinated by it as any of them. But she’d tried to become a skilled observer, trained herself to notice anything strange. She found herself looking around.

  Nobody else had noticed the quarry was filling up with threads of insubstantial grayness, slipping out from the woods from every side. “Lillian!” Kami called out. “Watch out!”

  Lillian glanced around, and Rob leaped forward. He did no magic: he just stepped forward, seized his wife’s hair, and cracked her head against the quarry wall. Lillian crumpled. Rob stooped to pick up his knife, while Ash ran forward and put himself between his parents. The quarry was like a cauldron of mist. Kami could barely see Lillian slumped on the rock. She grabbed onto Angela’s free hand and she, Angela, and Holly stood linked together.

  “I could never have dreamed I would be so disappointed in you, Ash,” said Rob.

  “Look,” Kami said softly.

  Through the mist rising from the quarry, she could dimly make out silhouettes. People coming out of the woods from all sides.

  “What the hell?” Angela whispered.

  “They’re reinforcements,” Kami whispered. Now she knew what Rosalind had been doing down in the town.