Free Unmade (The Lynburn Legacy Book 3)

wide as if he was being crucified and was very surprised about it. His eyes met Kami’s over Ash’s bowed head and he raised his eyebrows in silent frantic inquiry. Kami shrugged and made an encouraging motion.
    After a moment, Jared let one hand drop and patted Ash’s back tentatively.
    â€œUm,” he said. “There, there, buddy. I’m alive, but you don’t need to take it so hard.”
    â€œYou’re not funny,” Ash raged at him, and punched him, very carefully, on the shoulder. His arm tightened around Jared’s neck, his body tense as a bow. Jared hesitated, then laid his other hand on the back of Ash’s neck, fingers touching the ends of Ash’s hair in a brief self-conscious caress.
    â€œAll right,” Jared murmured. “All right.”
    â€œWe have to go,” said Kami, staring through the flames and dust. She could not see sorcerers coming, but that did not mean they were not.
    They went down the path away from the great golden house on the hill, walking as fast as Jared could manage. Ash had hold of Jared on one side, having jealously taken the position as if someone else might seize it from him.
    Heightwise, Kami supposed someone else should be on Jared’s other side, but he looked for her: not raising his eyebrows or doing anything else to call her to his side, but concentrating on her as if the absolute force of his focus would bring her there.
    He was right. She came to him, ducking her head and feeling absurdly shy, and then much less so when a good deal of his weight abruptly hit her shoulder.
    Jared ducked down his head and murmured in her ear, his breath warm against her skin: “What was that about?”
    â€œShush, you heartless monster,” said Kami. “He’s happy you’re alive. I thought it was very sweet.”
    â€œI can hear you both,” Ash grumbled from Jared’s other side.
    Kami couldn’t see him, but she could feel how he was feeling, of course. It was the same way she felt, embarrassed but radiantly happy.
    â€œOh, Jared,” said Rusty, mimicking Ash’s voice. “I am sooooo overcome with joy that you are alive.”
    â€œOh, Ash,” said Angela. “The inbreeding has done such different things to us. You are so girlish and emotional, prone to swooning and embracing people, while I stand here with a face like a stone and eyes like a rabid squirrel’s.”
    â€œAll that stuff you’re saying about your face is true, Jared,” said Rusty. “But I still wish to clasp you to my bosom.”
    â€œI was buried alive five minutes ago,” Jared muttered. “Already with the mockery?”
    Kami glanced over her shoulder at Angela and Rusty, arm in arm and snickering with delight, and Holly on Angela’s other side, smiling like a cheerfully wicked angel.
    â€œThat’s how we roll,” Kami said. “We live a mock-and-roll lifestyle.”
    She looked ahead to Sorry-in-the-Vale, and the curves of streets and the spiky lines of the roofs looked as if the town was opening its arms to receive them.
    Wonderfully and strangely, nobody followed them. They made their way slowly, because Jared could not go faster, and halted a few times when Kami had to make him stop and rest because his face had gone ashen, but finally they reached the High Street of Sorry-in-the-Vale.
    Kami saw faces at the windows, peering out, and people on the street stopped and looked at them as they went past, curious but afraid. Many seemed taken aback to see a Lynburn as a stumbling wounded child, or maybe they were just surprised to see Jared alive at all.
    Jared kept his head down and walked doggedly on. Kami held on to Jared’s arm tight.
    They were a few steps away from the Water Rising, the inn where Ash and his mother were staying, when they heard the sound of a commotion. It sounded like a few tables had gone flying into a few walls.
    Kami tried to use her hold on