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I’ll go with you, Jared said.
Do what you want, said Kami. She passed Rob and Lillian without looking at them. She was radiating so much fury that it acted as a force field, because Ash took a step back and blinked in surprise.
Jared did not back off, of course. As Kami stormed out of the sorcerers’ parlor, he was right behind her.
Once out of the parlor and down the couple of steps, Kami hesitated. She didn’t want to walk back through the hall of cutting wind and glass. The room she was in now had a window, floor-to-ceiling pale yellow panes. The garden spread out beyond the glass, transformed into smooth bright lines.
Kami went for the side door, tucked narrow and dark against that wide light expanse of window. When she clutched the doorknob, another fist-shaped one, the black iron knuckles pressed too hard into her palm. The door opened and the sunshine hit Kami, flooding warm over her hair and skin. She felt pure relief as she emerged from the cold manor.
Kami went and leaned against the wall attached to the rockery. She was staring at the ground and saw Jared’s shadow falling across hers before she saw him.
Doesn’t any of this freak you out? Kami asked.
No, said Jared. You are the source of everything for me. Why should magic be any different?
Sometimes I feel like I don’t know the shape of myself without you, Kami thought. She felt almost desperate. Sometimes I feel like you don’t know the shape of yourself.
“I know what I’d be.”
She looked up when Jared spoke. His jaw was tight, his eyes lowered: his hair falling on his brow, his lowered lashes a fringe of shadow on his cheekbones. The sunlight struck his hair and made it burn gold, but his face was all shadow.
“You wouldn’t be like your father,” Kami said. “You wouldn’t be like them.” She opened her mind to Jared. She tried to make it like opening a book so he could see her faith as clear as carmine and gold glowing on a page.
Who in the world would believe that but you? Jared asked. And how would I know you believed it, without this?
“You could trust me,” said Kami.
I do trust you, Jared told her. But I don’t understand why you want this gone. Kami felt the struggle in him and saw him swallow. He spoke painfully aloud again. “Is it something I did? I can—”
“No, Jared,” Kami said. No.
Confused pain radiated from him. Kami wasn’t sure if he was angry at her or at himself; she supposed it hardly mattered. That was the problem. Kami looked about the autumn garden, ruby and gold leaves making the trees look as if they were hung with treasure. She looked back at Jared. She saw the way he fit into this scene, as he had fit into the woods the first time he had stood by the Crying Pools, joking with her about the Sorrier River.
The Sorrier River, of course, was the sorcerer’s river. Sorry-in-the-Vale was sorcery in the vale. This place had been made and meant for him, so perfect that living in a city was like poison to him, while this place sent power coursing through his veins. She had access to that power now. According to Rob, she had control over it. She could reach out and touch it, the same way she could touch his mind. Except that she didn’t want to.
“I meant what I told you,” she said slowly. “By the Crying Pools. If I could go back, if I could change everything, I wouldn’t. I would never want to lose you.”
Relief washed through him, though confusion lingered. “So—”
“We can’t lose each other now,” said Kami. “I know you’re real, and you know I am, so we won’t lose each other. I think it would be worth listening to what your uncle has to say. I’m not saying I want to do it. I’m saying it might be worth considering.”
Jared’s voice was blistering. “Being cut in two?”
“Being individuals for a change!” Kami said, her voice low. “Being alone, for once in our lives.” She pushed off the garden wall and stepped away from Jared, watching her shadow slide away from his, while building walls in her mind, forbidding him to pass.
Jared looked up at her as she moved away, his eyes pale and disturbing as they always were in the grip of intense emotion. She knew that now, had learned him by heart well enough to recognize the color, like seeing a gray sky turn storm white through a pane of glass.
She looked at his face, the shadows and angles of him, and had such a vivid thought that she could almost imagine she was acting on it: walking to him across the waving grass, feeling his body, so separate and so different from her own against hers, muscles and sinews shifting against hers. She imagined her fingers on the warm nape of his neck, drawing his head down.
Only she could not do it with all her feelings laid out before him: this would not just be her telling a guy how she felt with no assurance of a return. There would be no way for her to escape afterward. Human beings were not meant to be bound together like this. She did not know how to bear it.
“Do you remember what you said to me the third time we met?” Kami asked. “That we should date?”
Jared did not answer, but his eyes went shocked silver.
“If we cut the connection,” she said, “I would.” Even with her walls up, she could feel his anger. Of course, she thought, of course she would say something like that and he would be angry. She wondered what he could sense, what might be slipping past her wall.
“I wish you hadn’t said that,” said Jared. “It’s like blackmail.”
