Unmade (The Lynburn Legacy Book 3) (3 page)

“You're going to be angry,” he predicted.

T
he last two times Rob Lynburn had opened the priest hole, Jared had tried to kill him.

The first time, Jared had tried to strangle Rob with his bare hands, and the second time he had used a weapon. There were not many weapons available when buried alive in a wall. The body of Edmund Prescott, twenty years dead, his fair hair turned white and brittle and hanging like spiderwebs in his gray sunken face, was all that Jared had.

Jared had shoved up Edmund's sleeve, rotten and disintegrating under his hand. Underneath his clothes, Edmund's body had shriveled to nothing but papery skin over bones. Jared tore the skin away and ripped a bone free out of the forearm.

He had spent some time—he did not know how long, time was hard to tell in this lightless trap—sharpening the bone against the stone wall of his prison. Hiding the bone in his sleeve, he waited.

Rob had lifted him out, and Jared had pretended to be more drugged than he was, head lolling, mumbling something about help and his mother. Rob had bent over him, almost seeming concerned.

Jared had whipped out his weapon and tried to plunge the bone into Rob's throat.

He had caught Rob unawares. Some of Rob's sorcerers had been with him and one had grabbed Jared's arm, pulling it back, so the wound was shallow instead of the gaping hole Jared had planned. The next minute, Jared had been pinned to the floor by the sorcerers as he struggled and lashed out under their hands, Rob's rage washing over him as magical pain.

Rob had taken hold of Jared's hair and banged his head, rhythmically and sickeningly hard, against the stone floor.

“Very resourceful, my boy,” he'd said. “I'm impressed. Don't try it again.”

They had left Edmund Prescott's body in the priest hole with him, but Jared had not tried it again. They would be expecting it now.

The food they gave him was drugged with something that made him drowsy and his magic not work. At first he did not eat it, but it became clear the choice was eat drugged food or starve to death, and the food let the days slip by faster, filled them full of dreams.

He was sitting with his head against the wall, dreaming, when the priest hole opened, a pale square of light on the wall above him. He felt himself being dragged up by magic, back against the wall, helpless as a puppet on Rob's string.

The light of day hurt his eyes: he squinted, dazzled, and in his blurry vision Rob's face almost looked kind.

“How are you today, Jared?” he asked gently. “Ready to be a dutiful son?”

Jared was lying on the ground. He knew he must look pitiful, dirty from the grave below, not able to see or stand: he tried to raise himself on one elbow and could not quite manage it—the elbow kept slipping away from him.

“Yeah,” he grated out. “I'll be a good boy. Don't put me back down there.”

Sight and sound slipped out of his reach: the last thing he saw as his vision darkened was Rob's proud smile.

Jared woke up in his room in Aurimere. He remembered a time when he hadn't liked his bedroom, its high ceilings and the rich red velvet drapes, but now it was his, his yellowed old books piled in a corner, his weights kept under the bed, the whole room familiar as his aunt Lillian's voice in the hall. Just lying on his bed was a profound and amazing relief.

After lying there for some time, he crawled off the bed. It was pathetic how weak he was, his body cramped from the priest hole and feeling fragile somehow, as if he had become suddenly old. His limbs ached and his muscles burned as he made for the shower: he almost fell a few times but doggedly stumbled toward it, and did fall into the claw-footed bathtub.

He was finally under the spray of water, beating out some of the snarls in his shoulders. It hurt fiercely as well, like being under a rain of hot needles, but it was worth it.

He wanted to get the dirt and the smell of the priest hole off him, the old blood on his skin, the filth, the enclosed, built-up dust, and the drier dust smell that was Edmund. He scrubbed and when he didn't have the strength to scrub he continued to stand there under the water, leaning against the wall, until he realized that the water had been icy cold for some time.

He staggered out of the tub, shaved while avoiding looking at himself in the mirror, and chose random clothes in his wardrobe that he pulled over his still-wet skin. They felt clean and light, almost unbelievably luxurious. Now that he was dressed, he could go to where the curtains were open, each curtain held by a gilded rope. He undid the ropes and the dazzling, painful sunlight was shut out.

Jared thought he could lie down again now. He went over to the other side of the bed, since the pillow he'd been lying on was gray as if … well, as if someone had crawled out of a tomb and left grave dirt everywhere he touched.

The door creaked open and Jared turned around, fast, his hand clenching in the bedclothes. He felt so pathetically weak, like a hunted, exhausted animal, hearing predators close in.

At the door was Ross Phillips, a boy from Kami's year. Jared found himself staring, unsure, when he would have been wary of an adult sorcerer. This was a kid his own age, no matter what magic he wielded or whose side he was on.

Ross stared back and him, and then bowed his head. It was, Jared realized, a gesture of submission to his master's son.

He said, “It's good that you're up. Your father wants to talk to you.”

Climbing the stairs of the bell tower meant Jared had to pause several times, sick and dizzy, to lean against the curving wall in the darkness. Every time, he had to take a deep breath and will himself farther up the stairs.

When he dragged himself in at last, he saw Rob waiting patiently in the space where the story said a great golden bell had once hung, before Jared's ancestor Elinor Lynburn had taken it and hidden it from soldiers in the Sorrier River, never to be discovered. Rob's hands were folded behind his back and he was turned away from Jared, apparently contemplating the view.

Sorry-in-the-Vale was laid out before him like a meal.

“Did you rest?” Rob asked him. He turned toward Jared, unhurriedly, as if it had not occurred to him that Jared could shove him right out of the tower.

It had occurred to Jared. He had used his magic to kill one father before, the first father, the man he had believed was his father before he knew about Sorry-in-the-Vale or magic or any of this. He had used magic to throw Dad down a flight of stairs and break his neck.

It would be different if he pushed Rob. Rob was a sorcerer. He could command the air to bear him up or carry him gently to the ground. So Jared nodded and smiled at him instead. He had been told his smiles were disquieting, and Rob did look briefly taken aback before giving him a fatherly smile in return.

He said, “We're going to keep drugging your food. I hope you understand that, my boy.”

“Seems sensible,” Jared observed.

“And we're going to have to restrict your movements to Aurimere itself,” Rob continued. “It grieves me to say this when your agreement to join me has made me happy and proud. But let's face it, you weren't exactly eager, were you?”

“I was under a bit of duress,” said Jared. “You make a really compelling argument. Join me or get walled up alive with a corpse? You should be a politician.”

Rob laughed, to all appearances amused by his son's sassy ways.

“I don't plan on taking any chances,” he let Jared know. “I realize that you are complying with my wishes largely out of fear. But I do hope that will change as you realize that you have chosen the right side.”

“The side that's going to win, you mean?”

“The side that's already won,” Rob told him sympathetically, as if he was breaking the news to Jared that Santa Claus did not exist. “Aurimere is mine. The town is mine. All Lillian's sorcerers are dead. There is nobody left to fight me, and no hope for those who might wish to try.”

“Good for you,” said Jared, looking off into the distance. “I don't see what you need me for. What do you want me to do?”

“Be my son,” said Rob. “Be at my side. Nothing more. You might think about what you want to do, though.”

“Oh,” Jared told him, “I am.”

He focused his attention on Rob, cold and absolute, and saw Rob blink. But Rob quickly regrouped and clapped Jared on the shoulder, a hearty gesture that sent pain shooting through Jared's entire body. Jared gritted his teeth and bore it.

“I know you weren't raised as a sorcerer, and it will take you more time to be able to consider your position in the proper light. But surely there are already benefits to being on my side that you can appreciate. Here's one: If you fight against me, you cannot win. But if you are on my side, as my beloved son, then you can choose to spare the people you care for. I won't interfere.”

“How interesting,” Jared said.

“That Prescott girl, for instance,” Rob commented. “Her parents are good people, loyal followers of mine. I have no doubt she could be brought into line. The Prescotts are a fine family.”

“You seem very fond of them.”

“Poor old Ed, do you mean?” Rob asked. “He was standing between me and what I wanted. It was nothing personal.”

Edmund Prescott had been his aunt Lillian's boyfriend. Rob had killed him for that. Edmund's whole family believed that Edmund had run away. Holly had never even met her uncle. He had died long before she was born, and nobody but Jared knew.

Jared had been down in that hole for a long time, looking into that lost boy's face, before they sent down the drugged food and Rob opened the door again. He knew exactly how Edmund Prescott must have felt before he died.

“I'd hate to see what you'd do if it was personal,” Jared said.

Rob laughed again, deep and fatherly, and put his arm around Jared's shoulders. Jared could remember a time when Rob had seemed like the father figure Jared had never had but had sometimes wished for, when Jared had desperately wanted this kind of affection and approval.

“You're right to be afraid,” Rob told him, voice still warm with laughter. “I really do find that source girl very annoying.”

Jared knew how to take a hit and not show he was hurt. He stared at Rob coldly. “You killed my mother for interfering with your plans. Don't ask me to believe you'd let Kami run around loose.”

“I have no intention of doing so,” said Rob. “She's enslaved both my sons at different times, and constantly tries to stir up trouble. But if you wanted to keep her, you could.”

It was Jared's turn to laugh, a jagged sound that rang through the bell tower.

“Are you suggesting I wall her up with Edmund Prescott?”

“That would be my preference,” said Rob. “But you can do whatever you like with her, as long as she's kept under control. So long as you don't put her in one of Aurimere's good bedrooms.”

Rob wasn't stupid, Jared reflected, or perhaps it was just blazingly obvious what dark things Jared had thought about Kami: how he would have made any bargain to keep her.

He said nothing.

Rob squeezed his shoulder as they stood united, looking down at Sorry-in-the-Vale. The town lay in a valley, like something fragile and precious held in the hollow of a giant's hand. Able at any moment to be crushed, if the giant closed his fist.

“You don't know anything yet,” Rob said. “You cannot even dream of what I have planned. So many people are going to die. But those you love will live. All you have to do is be the son I know you can be.”

The son Ash could never have been, the son who could murder without hesitation or regret, kill and kill savagely.

“I think I can do that,” Jared said slowly.

“That's my boy.”

Jared had no choice. Maybe he could never have been anything else.

Rob walked with him down the tower stairs into the portrait gallery, patient with Jared's faltering pace. He walked him all over Aurimere, as if he had acquired a hyena and wanted to put it on a leash and parade his exotic new possession around in front of everyone.

There were a lot of mirrors in Aurimere, which Jared had hated once. The mirrors' reflective surfaces were golden instead of silvery, as if they were made out of gold, copper, or bronze. Their frames were made of wrought-iron river weeds and flowers, surrounded by towers and the profiles of drowned women. Actually, it was the same woman, drowning over and over again.

Jared saw image after image of what they looked like walking together, Rob the proud father and benevolent leader, with his hair like a crown. And the boy with the stark scar and the empty eyes beside him, face stony pale over his black shirt, but unmistakably his son. Jared didn't hate the mirrors of Aurimere anymore: they showed him exactly what he wanted to see.

He saw the same reflection in the eyes of a coppery-haired girl in Kami's English class, one of the sorcerers who sat with them at dinner. She looked at Jared and her eyes went wide with terror.

Jared lifted his glass and smiled slowly at her. He thought she was going to faint.

He leaned to the head of the table where his father sat, with Jared at his right-hand side, and said in Rob's ear, “She's very pretty.”

“Amber?” Rob asked, loud enough so Jared was sure Amber heard. “She is, isn't she? And she's your own kind.” He raised his voice even further. “I'm sure Amber would be delighted to instruct you in magic you have yet to learn. Wouldn't you, Amber?”

Amber nodded mutely. Ross Phillips, at the bottom of the table, glared at Jared. But if looks could kill, Jared would have murdered everyone in this room before Ross had the chance.

Rob pushed his chair back and stood, picking up the glass by his plate. “I hope you'll all lift a glass to welcome my son to Aurimere,” he said, voice booming.

The ceiling in the dining hall was curved with a hollow rising up in the center to form a cupola on the roof outside. A chandelier hung from the dome by a thick chain. When Rob's voice rang out, the tiny gold-leafed dagger shapes hanging from the chandelier jangled and made a sound like faraway bells.