Jared flinched. “Her?”
“Rosalind,” Aunt Lillian said, and Jared flinched again, couldn’t stop himself even though he could hear his aunt’s voice in his ears—like a whipped animal—and see her disapproving face. “Other people hurt her,” Aunt Lillian said. “And other people hurt you. And you were both angry, and maybe you were both scared, but no matter what dark thoughts you have you didn’t hurt her. Someone else hurt her. Don’t waste time blaming yourself when you can spend time planning how to destroy our enemies.”
“Can we get that last thing embroidered on a cushion, Aunt Lillian?” Jared asked.
Aunt Lillian flicked up an eyebrow. “You can make as many bad jokes as you want, Jared. I really do not care. But stop being so ridiculous about yourself.”
She reached out and touched his face, the line of her cool hand against his scar. He had his back to the headboard already; he wasn’t sure how to get away from her without making it obvious.
“I think you believe that you might destroy anything you touch,” Aunt Lillian said. “Give yourself more credit. You’re a Lynburn. I believe that you will only destroy that which you mean to destroy.”
Rob was a Lynburn too. His mother had been a Lynburn, and she had known what rage and hate he was capable of.
“I get—really angry,” said Jared, and swallowed.
“So do I,” said Lillian. “I would kill anyone who hurt what is mine to protect. I would kill anyone who hurt you. You don’t have to be like Rob, or like the man you thought was your father. You can be like me.”
Jared paused. “Okay, Aunt Lillian,” he said in a low voice. He swallowed and let his cheek rest for an instant against her palm, then looked up at her. “Except that you’re terrible.”
Aunt Lillian put her arm around his neck and used her hold on him to pull herself across the bed, then sat on the pillow beside him.
“So you will be terrible. But that does not mean you have to be unloved, or unforgiven.”
Aunt Lillian had killed her own sorcerers without meaning to. Aunt Lillian was as much of a destructive force as Rob. Jared didn’t want to tell her that, though, and not only because he did not want to hurt her. His mother had made him believe that being a Lynburn, he was born to destroy and never to be loved. Aunt Lillian was telling him that he could be loved, even if he was the hurricane his mother had said he was born to be. He wanted to hear that more than he wanted to hear anything else. That probably meant he was terrible.
She leaned her fair head against Jared’s shoulder. Jared had no idea what he was supposed to do about that. When he put his arm around her, her shoulders felt terribly thin, but she leaned against him, so perhaps he had not got it too wrong.
“I love you,” said Aunt Lillian. “And I’m sorry you were buried alive. I hope you get over it quickly.”
She patted his arm. The door opened, the very creak of the hinges apologetic.
“I’m sorry if I’m disturbing you. I could … ,” Ash said tentatively. “I could feel that you were upset.”
“You kids and your psychic bonds,” Aunt Lillian scoffed. “I had to hear him shrieking in his sleep.”
Jared would have objected to her phrasing but was aware that would earn him the patented Aunt Lillian stare, combining indifference and arrogance in the way mostly only cats could. Instead he looked at Ash, shyly edging his way into the room, the lamplight hitting his bowed golden head. He was holding on to his arm; Jared felt guilty that he’d hurt him, even though he’d seen Lillian healing him.
Jared felt other stuff too, feelings that were not his own: Ash’s swirl of confused emotion, and beyond that—beyond that a glimmer, perhaps, of someone else. Maybe it was only that he wanted to feel it so much.
It was not anything like that other link. He couldn’t talk to Ash in his head, and he was honestly deeply uncomfortable with getting Ash’s feelings all over his: it seemed as undesirable as ketchup getting mixed up with his eggs.
But he could feel how Ash felt about him. He had assumed, though he knew Ash was trying to make things between them go more smoothly, that some of the distrust and fear and anger he could sense swirling darkly in Ash like blood in water would be directed at him. But it wasn’t.
How Ash felt about him was surprisingly nice.
Jared did not know if he and Ash were really brothers. Rob and Lillian both thought Rob was Jared’s father. Jared’s mother had not been quite sure. There was no way to tell, now.
Jared supposed they could be brothers, if they both wanted to be.
“Are you all right?” Ash asked now, sidling closer to the bed. He had been meandering around it until he was on the other side. Now he sat down tentatively.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” said Jared, and jerked his head in what Ash could take as an invitation if he wanted.
Ash clambered onto the bed, which was not quite big enough for two and definitely too small for three. He sank his head down on the pillows instead of sitting against the headboard, and Aunt Lillian laid her hand on his blue-pajama-clad shoulder.
“You’re both perfectly all right,” she informed them. “And we will get Aurimere back, and our magic back, and our town back, and then we will have everything we need.”
“We have some important stuff already,” Ash offered tentatively.
Lillian frowned. “What do you mean?”
Jared surrendered himself to the strangeness of this situation, sank back onto the pillows himself with his head near Lillian’s hip, and sighed heavily to attract his aunt’s attention. “He wants to know you love him more than that stupid house.”“It is a very nice house,” Aunt Lillian said, sounding offended. “Your ancestors are buried in the crypt of that house.”
“Sure. Okay. We’ll get our lovely creepy house back. When they bury me in that crypt, I want ‘Jared, very inbred, deeply uncomfortable about it’ on my tombstone.”
Lillian transferred her frown to Jared, but on the other side of her he heard Ash’s soft laugh, and felt the wash of feeling: comfort, relief, affection. He could recognize them all, but they were different from his own feeling of the same thing, like seeing different shades of the same color or a different garment made out of the same material.
Ash felt things in a better way than he did, he thought, but it was hard to resent him for that. Jared knew what was bound to happen between Kami and Ash. He wanted the best for her and—feeling what Ash felt for him—Jared could not find it even in his ugly heart to wish Ash ill.
Jared didn’t want to hurt Ash. In fact, he felt the urge to protect him more than he felt anything else.
He tried to project that feeling of protectiveness over to Ash, tried to soothe him enough so that Ash could sleep.
Jared levered himself up on one elbow and looked beyond Lillian, who was stroking Ash’s hair with a faintly perplexed air, as if she was not quite sure how she had come to be in this position. Ash had his face tucked against the pillow, hair a golden curve over his brow and eyes almost completely shut.
Jared could not help but wonder: Did I do that?
“Sometimes I worry you two do not have enough respect for your heritage,” Lillian said. “Your father may have betrayed us, but Aurimere is ours by right. Power has been wielded and passed down from Lynburn to Lynburn for hundreds of years. You should honor that legacy.”
Jared thought it was amazing she could say this kind of thing with a straight face. He was tired, so tired he felt almost dizzy. Aunt Lillian was unbelievable, and so was Ash, and so was the big stupid house and their big stupid legacy, and yet somehow he’d surrendered to it. He had found somewhere he did not fit but could belong anyway, and thought perhaps that meant family.
“Aunt Lillian,” said Jared. “I’ll tell you what I honor. I love you even though you are terrible, and even though I am too. Ash, I love you even though that puzzles me even more than loving Aunt Lillian, and I will probably never have anything in common with you. I’m not learning how to use the right forks or whatever, you both still annoy me, and I will always be there for you when you need me and I will never betray you. Now let me sleep.”
Jared put his head decidedly down on the pillow and shut his eyes. One of them would have to hit him with something to make him move or talk any more about his emotions.
He felt instead Ash’s happiness and Aunt Lillian’s hand, lighter than a breath of wind, touching his hair. She had touched his hair like that once before, he thought. And she might again, and again, until demonstrations of affection became something he did not notice so painfully much. It was strange and wonderful to think that one day he might even take it for granted.
He had the chance to doze for a few minutes before Ash bolted upright in bed, and Ash’s fear ran through him cold and sharp as a sword.
“Kami,” said Ash.
“Again?” asked Aunt Lillian, but neither Jared nor Ash paid her any attention.
“What’s happened?” Jared said, and tried not to sound angry that Ash knew something about her Jared did not. She was in danger and that he could only know, only help her, through Ash.
“I don’t understand,” Ash said, stumbling over his words, so they came even more slowly and Jared was even more maddened. “I thought she was safe now—”
“Safe now?” Jared repeated. “She was in trouble before?”
Ash stared at him, speechless with dismay.
“She was in trouble, and you knew, and you didn’t tell me.”
Fear and regret were dulling the edge of Ash’s panic, and that made Jared remember there was something to panic about. His stupid jealousy, the way he felt as if he had a right to her mind and her heart when he did not, when he had no right at all—that couldn’t matter. If he let himself demand any answer from Ash but one, then his selfishness was greater than any feeling he had for her.
Jared took a deep breath. “Ash,” he said, “what’s happening to Kami right now?”
It was late, and Holly felt like a complete creeper.
She’d been on the other end of this with boys, of course, where they delayed making their move and thus made her stay out later and later. Said boys never seemed to understand that hooking up—which seemed like a fun idea at eleven at night—seemed like the least appealing thing in the world at four in the morning.
She had a little more sympathy with those boys now.
Holly and Angela had been studying alone together all evening. Even though Kami hadn’t reported back on whether Angela might like-like her, it seemed the ideal time to make a move.
She’d always thought of herself as awesome at making moves, in the way girls made moves, smiling significantly and sitting close and leaning in. Actually trying to initiate a hookup was much more difficult than she had suspected. Especially if there were feelings involved, which tangled her tongue and made her shy, when at least with all other hookups she had been fairly confident about what was going on and able to at least make basic conversation.
“So nice it is for Henry to stay,” she said, a sentence that came out way more garbled than it had sounded in her head.
The more important it was to get something right, Holly suspected, the more sure she, Holly Prescott, was to mess that thing up.
Angela had agreed to stay in the Water Rising and study Aurimere books with Holly, but Holly was sure that Angie had not thought this process would last long into the night. Angie rested her elbows on the table and regarded the world with a pissed-off stare, as if she hated the night, tables, and air generally.
“What?” she asked flatly.
“Uh,” said Holly. “It’s really nice of you—and Rusty, of course; I like Rusty, who doesn’t like Rusty, he’s so likable—to let Henry stay with you. And to let me stay with you. I really appreciate it. And so does Henry. I’m sure.”