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Rosalind stood there wavering and watching her. Kami knew Jared’s feelings for his mother, the pity and protectiveness and the shame and hate too, but she couldn’t reach them. She felt sorry for Rosalind Lynburn, and felt resentment for her treatment of Jared, but Kami found she could not even feel that very strongly. Feelings slipped away from Rosalind like light passing through glass. She almost seemed transparent, because she never quite seemed real. Kami wondered if that was why Rob had married Lillian in the end.
Rosalind slid the door of Aurimere House wide open and stood aside so Kami could walk in. The stone flags of the floor radiated cold through the soles of her shoes. Rosalind’s hair blew in the wind rushing through the door. The ends touched Kami’s face as she went past, featherlight at the edge of her eye.
Rosalind shut the door, and all the air and light outside was shut away. Kami stood in the center of the great gray hall, surrounded by arches as if each wall was a church door. Rosalind was standing in front of the door. She looked even paler against the slab of age-dark wood, almost glowing, like an angel.
Like an angel forbidding someone to pass.
“I told you not to come back,” Rosalind said as Kami reached for Jared. He showed her Rob telling him what happened when you crossed the Lynburns.
Rosalind’s hair blew away from her face, even though there was no wind. “Do I need to show you why you should obey me?” she whispered.
The narrow windows in the hall gleamed fierce scarlet and bright white, like blood and pearls. The lights danced in Kami’s vision, dazzling and distracting. She took two steps through the sea of swimming diamonds and looked up at Rosalind. “Like you showed my mother?”
Rosalind’s face remained tranquil. “I can do much worse to you,” she said. “I only needed to scare her.”
“And what can you do to me?” Kami asked.
“Anything I have to,” Rosalind answered. “So that you stay away from my son.”
The barrage of crystalline and ruby lights pounded through Kami’s brain, panic pulsing through her. “I won’t do it.”
“I might kill you,” Rosalind breathed.
“You’ll have to,” said Kami. She yelled mentally for Jared.
The hall was suddenly filled with cold air and glass shards as both of the windows exploded inward. The glass shards were like knives, blades the flashing red of traffic lights and blades Kami could hardly see except for where their jagged edges glittered.
They came flying at her from all directions. The air was filled with them: there was no way to duck. There were shards skimming along the flagstones and shards aimed right at Kami’s eyes.
Kami put up a hand to shield herself, fury racing with the fear shivering through her blood. She spun around to face Rosalind.
“Promise me,” said Rosalind, a tranquil smile on her face. “And I’ll make it all stop.”
The doors aren’t opening! Jared shouted.
Jared’s terror cut through Kami, wild as her own, and past all their shared fear Kami found a cold place in the center of her chest. Her town had been twisted into a place she hardly recognized, and now Rosalind Lynburn thought she had a right to give her orders.
“No,” she said out loud.
Like a flock of birds all changing their flight pattern, the shards realigned and began to close in on Rosalind Lynburn. Rosalind’s eyes met Kami’s, but before Kami could decipher the expression in them, Rosalind looked over Kami’s shoulder. Her face filled with terror.
The door by one of the empty windows stood open. Jared stood framed in it. Rob Lynburn was holding him back.
Rosalind retreated from Rob, leaving the door and going to the stairs. She walked through the glass shards, flying at nobody now but still suspended in the air. They caught and tumbled through her long hair like pebbles in a wave.
Rosalind sat on the bottom step of the wide dark flight of stairs and put her face in her hands. “I never wanted you to know,” she said, sounding almost forlorn.
“Know what?” Lillian Lynburn demanded from the top of the stairs.
Ash was beside his mother. He looked at his aunt, at Kami, at the hall with its empty windows that the wind was whistling through, and at his father. Ash’s eyes went wider and wider: he looked scared.
Kami was surrounded by broken glass and Lynburns, terrified and exhilarated and never alone, the fierce beat of Jared’s focus on her like a second heart that echoed the first.
Rob’s grasp must have slackened. Jared was able to wrench away and run into the hall. The glass in the air between him and Kami fell to the stone and shattered, glittering points of star white and sunset red scattered over the gray floor.
Are you all right? Jared asked.
For a moment, she thought he might grab her, as she’d tried to grab him at Monkshood, but he simply hovered close. She looked up into his tense face and his pale blazing eyes. I’m all right.
