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Kami placed herself in front of Angela. “And why is that, you incredible asshole?”
Ash looked away. “To get more magic,” he answered in a defensive voice. “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
“Good. Because I never will.”
“What’s the alternative?” Ash asked.
“Oooh, hard to say,” Angela sneered behind Kami. “Other than live without magic like everybody else, you loser.”
“We’re not like everyone else, though, are we?” Ash demanded. “You didn’t spend your life chasing some guy who my mother knew would hurt my aunt, because one of yours always ends up turning against one of ours. You didn’t spend your life being sick every fall, living in a different house every time, because we couldn’t come back home. We can be more powerless than your kind could ever be. We should be more powerful than your kind could ever be. And it’s not fair.”
It was Rob’s logic in Ash’s mouth, that sources should not be powerful, that nobody should be powerful except the sorcerers. Rob’s poison in Ash’s ears, and Rob’s rage that had sent Kami tumbling down a well, because she and Jared were better off dead than linked.
“Your father sent you to us, didn’t he?” Kami asked. “That very first day. Rosalind told you both everything about me and Jared as soon as you found her, and gave you the Lynburn knives. You came asking for Kami Glass.”
Even Ash’s feet looked restless and guilty, shifting on the ground as if he was climbing and could not quite find purchase, as if he was going to fall. “He only told me to watch you,” Ash said, low. “I didn’t hurt you. I liked you. I didn’t hurt that girl Nicola either. I never wanted to hurt anyone.”
Kami looked over her shoulder at Angela. She was still now, but Kami could see her wrists and how she had struggled against her chains, the skin raw and sore. “Oh, no?” Kami asked.
“I’m not the one who set the price for power,” Ash said softly. “I would never have made it blood. But that’s what it is.” Something about the way he said it was like the sound of the chill, turning-to-winter wind, running through leaves that were dying by turning to gold.
The hair on the back of Kami’s neck was standing up. Ash and Rob, and maybe Rosalind. Maybe three sorcerers. She did not know if she could fight them all, not when she felt so weak and strange since the Lynburn knife had shed her blood. But she had to.
Ash’s face was still turned away, his profile like something on a coin. Kami remembered what she had thought about him once, that he looked the part of a fairy-tale prince.
“You helped your father kill animals,” she said.
It was strange when Ash glanced at her and his face changed from picture-perfect to something human and guilty. “When you kill, power floods through you,” he said. “You feel like you’re finally, finally all right. That at last you are what you were always told you were supposed to be. It wipes away what came before, it makes everything right, and then it fades so fast. I know you don’t understand. I just want to explain to you—that I’m sorry.” Ash’s voice faded as he spoke, passion dying into wistfulness, then silence and the sound of the river.
“Don’t be sorry,” Kami said. “Don’t do this.”
“But if he doesn’t kill me,” Angela murmured, sounding almost relaxed about the whole business, “someone else will.”
Ash moved then, and Kami saw what had been concealed by his body before: the other Lynburn knife, long and glittering gold in his hand.
“What do you want me to do?” Ash demanded, and his voice was as cold as the blade looked, light washing up and down the steel, as cold as the sweat that slicked Kami’s body.
“I want you to choose,” said Kami. “Stop being a coward and apologizing to me and act. Show me what you’re going to do, Ash. Show me who you’re going to be.”
“I’ve already chosen.”
“Kami!” said Angela, and her voice was fierce. It made Kami turn her back on Ash and his knife. “Kami, will you trust me? Promise me something. Will you please hide and stay hidden—no matter what?”
Kami looked down into Angela’s clear brown eyes. Angela did not look afraid, even now, when Kami felt so scared and so worn by terror it seemed like she had been scared for years.
Kami nodded.
She had hidden in the quarry before, more times than she could count, but it had been years ago. Sobo, Dad, or Mum would call for her to get out of the woods, and she would be curled up in one of the crevices in the quarry wall, giggling to herself and Jared in the small space.
Kami stepped into the shadow cast by the quarry wall and wormed herself into her old hiding place. She was far bigger than she had been the last time she had tried this. Every extra inch of her was in pain, her head jammed painfully against her knees, but she was hidden just in time.
Rob Lynburn did not climb down into the quarry. He leaped, and landed on his feet on the quarry floor, knife in hand.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The Last Words
Rob landed lightly for such a big man. Kami saw grit, the color of sand, crunching beneath his heels.
