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“I don’t understand,” Lillian said furiously.
“Look what they’re doing,” Rob told his wife. His voice was rough. “Look! Can’t you see what’s going on?” He looked at Kami as if he hated her.
Jared aligned himself with Kami, pushing his shoulder in front of hers, and glared back at his uncle.
Kami was the focus of all Lynburn attention: Rob’s burning look, Lillian’s icily baffled stare, Ash’s scared eyes, and Rosalind’s distress. Jared on her side but not knowing, any more than she did, what was happening.
When Rob Lynburn spoke, his voice was grim and accompanied by the sound of Rosalind sobbing. “This girl is a source,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
A Heart in Your Hand
The Lynburns escorted Kami into the parlor, as if because she was a source—whatever that might be—they were willing to use company manners. Lillian placed herself on one of the canopied sofas at the back of the room, like a queen receiving her subjects. She sat in the center of the sofa, so Rob was stuck sitting to one side, like a royal afterthought. Rosalind was on the other sofa, still weeping. Ash was standing at the door as if he was uncertain of his welcome, or uncertain that he wanted to be there, or both.
Kami sat on the window seat, a dull gold curtain obscuring part of her view of the room. Jared was on the floor at her feet, close but not touching her as usual. He had one leg drawn up to his chest and was acting so much like a guard dog Kami thought he might snarl if any of his family drew near.
“So, you’re all sorcerers,” said Kami. “And I’m a source. What does that mean?”
“We use natural things as sources for our power,” Lillian told her. “The woods. Animals. Whoever killed that girl was using her death to fuel his power.”
“But I’m not dead,” said Kami.
“Indeed,” Lillian returned. “Sorcerers get one burst of power from death, but a continuous flow of power from life. We get power from this town, from the woods, and especially from the lakes. We can use someone’s hair or someone’s blood to focus a spell. And in special cases, with a particular kind of person, a sorcerer can form a link that will magnify their power tenfold. But people born capable of being sources are very rare, and we do not use them.”
“Because the power is not worth the cost,” Rob broke in. “A sorcerer is bound to their source and can never break away. It is a disgustingly imbalanced form of magic. If the source dies, the sorcerer dies. If the sorcerer dies, it makes no difference to the source.”
The weight of their combined accusing stares pressed down on her. “It would make a difference to me,” said Kami.
“Be that as it may,” said Lillian, “two things are known among our kind. One is that a sorcerer with a source has great power. Power to wake the woods,” she continued, eyeing Jared. “Power to change the world.”
“And the other is that in the end, the source controls the power,” said Rob. “The sorcerer’s power might be magnified, but now it all pours out through the source. The source could decide to cut the sorcerer off from their own magic at any time and leave them with nothing. The magic does not even really belong to the sorcerer anymore. What use is it to have world-changing power, just to put it in someone else’s hands?”
Kami thought of being hidden at the pool, seeing things in the woods, turning the glass against Rosalind. Had she caused all of that herself? Had she taken power Jared was born with and used it, used him, without ever intending to? She touched Jared’s mind. He didn’t feel angry with her, only surprised, his mind turned to hers naturally, like brushing the back of someone’s hand and having him link your fingers together.
Lillian looked at Kami speculatively. “Some might say it was worth it, having a partner in order to be able to change the world. They write stories about sources and sorcerers. They become legend. They say King Arthur was a source.”
“So I’m Merlin?” Jared asked, sounding incredulous.
“The story is unclear,” Lillian conceded. “There is also mention of a woman on Arthur’s side who could do magic. The Lady of the Lake.”
“Uh,” said Jared, “I’d rather be Merlin.”
Lillian smiled a small scarlet smile. “A sorcerer has to go through fire and water to reach their full power. Especially water. I think the Lady was the real sorcerer.”
“You see how it works,” said Rob. “We all know the name of the source. We can never be sure who the sorcerer was. The sorcerer does not matter. There has not been a sorcerer and a source in Sorry-in-the-Vale since 1480 for a reason. I don’t want that kind of life for my nephew.”
“I’m okay,” Jared said. Kami felt him reaching for her and knew he said it more for her benefit than Rob’s.
From the look on Rob’s face, he knew that too. “Are you? Or are you just saying what she wants to hear? Sources influence your emotions as well as control your magic. You haven’t known about sorcery long, I know, but you have to understand how serious this is. She could cut you off from your own magic any time she liked. You have to understand that she has absolute power over you.”
Kami sat stricken.
“You have to understand,” said Jared, “that that’s what I want.”
Rosalind’s ragged breathing caught on another sob. “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she told Rob. “I would never do anything to upset you.”
That piteous appeal made Kami look not at Rosalind or at Rob, but at Lillian, to see how she took this evidence that her twin sister was still in love with her husband. Lillian had not turned a hair. She was looking at Jared, her blue eyes narrowed with interest. “My sister did this to you?” she inquired. “I understood that taking a source was voluntary.”
