Untold
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YNBURN
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EGACY
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NSPOKEN
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NTOLD
Also by Sarah Rees Brennan
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OVENANT
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URRENDER
By Sarah Rees Brennan and Justine Larbalestier
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Sarah Rees Brennan’s short stories included in:
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NTHRALLED
: P
ARANORMAL
D
IVERSIONS
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IRL
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AS ON
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First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Simon and Schuster UK Ltd
A CBS COMPANY
First published in the USA in 2013 by Random House Children’s Books,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Copyright © 2013 Sarah Rees Brennan
Jacket and interior art copyright © 2013 by Giorgio Fochesato/Getty Images
Map copyright © 2013 by Theo Black
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
The right of Sarah Rees Brennan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
1st Floor, 222 Gray’s Inn Road
London
WC1X 8HB
Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-85707-809-4
ebook 978-0-85707-810-0
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
For Susan
Who can make about a thousand beautiful things I could never dream of making, and also write faster than I can. (Where’s the justice in that?) Who is the life of every party and also makes a party in a living room: basically, who is a joy forever.
Here’s to you, Suzy Q.
11. A Drop of Blood, a Single Tear
12. A Drop of Blood, What You Hold Dear
14. Call upon My Soul Within the House
16. A Preference for Breathing
18. What I’ve Tasted of Desire
27. The Lady of Aurimere’s Error
PART I
IN THE DARK
And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less. . . .
—Robert Frost
Chapter One
The Scarecrow Trials
WELCOME TO SORRY-IN-THE-VALE. IT’S A MAGICAL PLACE (AND WE MEAN THAT LITERALLY).
BY
K
AMI
G
LASS
Let’s not front. We all know magic is real.
You know. Or it’s time you knew. It’s time someone told you.
I always said that every town has a story, that even our sleepy Sorry-in-the-Vale must have one. I was so sure that I could find a story hidden somewhere under the chocolate-box prettiness of our town. I thought finding a story would be like bird-watching in the Vale woods, waiting for bright eyes and a burst of wings. I thought it would be like finding gold.
It wasn’t like that at all.
I was searching for a story, and then the Lynburn family returned to the manor above our town: the sisters Lillian and Rosalind, their sons Ash and Jared, and Lillian’s husband, Rob. They had been gone seventeen years, but as soon as they returned there was blood in the woods.
They were not here long before a girl died.
The Lynburns are sorcerers. I have seen magic with my own eyes. I saw Jared Lynburn turn himself invisible. I saw Ash Lynburn make objects fly. I saw shadows come to life, and come for me.
It was neither Jared nor Ash Lynburn who killed someone. Jared Lynburn may be, in this reporter’s completely unbiased opinion, the most infuriating idiot in the land, but he was not responsible for this. Lillian, Jared, Ash, even Rosalind are not the ones who want to make Sorry-in-the-Vale again what it once was: a place where the sorcerers were our lords, demanding our blood as their right.
Rob Lynburn killed Nicola Prendergast. She was my age: she was seventeen. We were friends when we were children. I do not know how to talk about her death, that she died so a selfish lunatic could have more power, but I know I must. There are people in this town who already know the secrets of Sorry-in-the-Vale: people who are not talking and not acting because they are afraid. But hiding from the truth will not make it go away.
The Lynburns aren’t the only sorcerers. They are the leaders, but there are others. There are police officers who are sorcerers. There are teachers who are sorcerers. There is magic on every side. Rob and Rosalind Lynburn left Aurimere House two weeks ago, and we know Rob was recruiting sorcerers to kill with him months before that. He has not been seen or heard from since he left, but that means nothing. He is a sorcerer and can walk unseen, gathering more sorcerers to him and making his plans.