Untold by Sarah Rees Brennan Read Free Book Online Page A

said, “I don’t.”
    “I think Jared has a good chance of surviving the ceremony, or I would not suggest it,” Lillian said. “I am not in the habit of recklessly throwing away my resources.”
    That made Jared let out a sound almost like a laugh, though it seemed to get stuck in his throat. “Why, Aunt Lillian. You old softy.”
    Lillian ignored this as she did everything she did not like. “And who says,” she asked, “that you’re a half-breed?”
    “My father was a lot of things,” Jared said, and Kami remembered all the things Jared’s father had been, before Jared threw him down a flight of stairs in the dark: violent and hateful, all the things Jared thought he was too. “But he wasn’t a sorcerer.”
    Lillian’s voice rang out in the hush. “Who says that he was your father?”
    Ash started, not Jared.
    “Look at Ash,” Lillian continued, not even seeing how her son flinched. “Look at yourself. My sister was in love with my husband. She was pregnant before she ever left Sorry-in-the-Vale. I think your father was a sorcerer. I think your father was Rob Lynburn. You can talk about leaving this town, about leaving Aurimere. But you can’t get rid of yourself, no matter how much you want to. There’s magic in your blood. Every drop.”
    Jared was looking down: not at the floor, Kami realized, but at his own hands, knuckles linked together and bone-white. He stood up and crossed the floor to Lillian in two strides. She tilted up her face to look at him. Their eyes met.
    “Is that supposed to change something?” Jared asked softly. “It doesn’t change a thing. Either I already killed my father, or I’m going to kill him soon.” He turned away from Lillian and left the room, banging the door behind him.
    “Well done, Mother,” Ash snapped, and left too. He might have been following Jared or just fleeing; Kami couldn’t tell.
    Lillian regarded the rest of them with composure, as if they mattered to her not at all, because they were simply human and she was infinitely superior. “We will return momentarily,” she announced, and departed, closing the door with a decisive little snap.
    Those left stared around at each other. Holly was openly dismayed. Kami could feel Angela’s stiff muscles against her own body, though her face betrayed nothing.
    “This is all very intense,” Rusty said, giving Kami’s shoulder an encouraging little shake. “The Lynburns are better than cable.”
    Kami stood up. “I have to go after him.” She couldn’t stand seeing them look at her sympathetically again, so she didn’t look. She just left, and they were all too kind to point out the obvious: that he didn’t want her.
    Kami went through the corridor and into the bar. At the pool table, a couple of older boys were standing around looking at her strangely. She went into the next room, where Martha Wright gave her a look of appeal from behind the bar.
    There was no Jared or Ash in sight. Kami opened the door and took a few steps into the street, white building and yellow street both turned gray by night and rain. The street was empty except for the thin, freezing rain slicking the cobbles and seeping through her clothes. Kami went back inside and walked slowly to rejoin the others.
    She crossed the floor of the pool room, ignoring the staring guys again, and opened the door to the corridor leading into the parlor. It took her a moment to realize there was someone else in that small dark corridor.
    He was standing against the wall in the shadows. The only light was the stripe cast through the door Kami had not quite shut behind her; the iron doorknob was still pressed against her palm. His face was shadowed, but in that pale strip of light, she saw the gold glint of his hair and the line of his body, shoulders squared and arms folded.
    “It doesn’t matter,” said Kami. She let go of the doorknob and reached for him. Miraculously, he did not flinch. He let her fingertips rest against the worn leather