Lord of Shadows The Dark Artifices 2

9

T

HESE

L

ANDS

Kit soon had a new item to add to his list of things he didn’t like about Shadowhunters. They wake me up in the middle of the night.

It was Livvy who woke him up specifically, shaking him out of a dream of Mantid demons. He sat up, gasping, a knife in his hand—one of the daggers he’d taken from the weapons room. It had been on his nightstand and he had no recollection of picking it up.

“Not bad,” Livvy said. She was hovering over his bed, her hair tied back, her gear half-invisible in the darkness. “Fast reflexes.”

The knife was about an inch from her chest, but she didn’t move. Kit let it clatter back to the nightstand. “You have got to be kidding me.”

“Get up,” she said. “Ty just saw Zara sneak out the front door. We’re Tracking her.”

“You’re what?” Kit got yawning out of bed, only to be handed a pile of dark clothes by Livvy. She raised her eyebrows at the sight of his boxers but made no other comment.

“Put your gear on,” she said. “We’ll explain on the way.”

She headed out of the room, leaving Kit to change. He had always wondered what Shadowhunter gear would feel like. The boots, pants, shirt, and jacket of sturdy, dark material and heavy weapons belt looked uncomfortable, but—they weren’t. The gear was light and flexible on, despite being so tough that when he took the dagger from his bedside and tried to cut the arm of the jacket, the blade didn’t even part the material. The boots seemed to fit immediately, like the ring, and the weapons belt sat light and snug around his hips.

“Do I look all right?” he asked, appearing in the hall. Ty was gazing thoughtfully at his closed right hand, a rune glimmering on the back of it.

Livvy gave Kit a thumbs-up. “You absolutely could have been rejected from the yearly Hot Shadowhunters Calendar.”

“Rejected?” Kit demanded as they started downstairs.

Her eyes were dancing. “For being too young, of course.”

“There is no Hot Shadowhunters Calendar,” said Ty. “Both of you be quiet; we need to get out of the house without being spotted.”

They crept out the back way and down the road toward the beach, careful to avoid the night patrol. Livvy whispered to Kit that Ty was holding a hair clip that Zara had left on a table: It worked as a sort of homing beacon, pulling him in her direction. She seemed to have gone down to the beach and then walked along the sand. Livvy pointed to her footprints, in the process of being washed away by the rising tide.

“It could have been a mundane,” said Kit, for argument’s sake.

“Following this exact path?” Livvy said. “Look, we’re even zigging and zagging where she did.”

Kit couldn’t really argue. He set his mind to keeping up with Ty, who was practically flying over the dunes of sand and the boulders and uneven rocks that dotted the coastline more thickly as they moved north. He scaled an alarmingly tall wall of pitted rock and dropped down on the other side; Kit, following, almost tripped and landed face-first in the sand.

He managed to regain his footing and was relieved. He wasn’t sure who he least wanted to look like a fool in front of, Livvy or Ty. Maybe it was an equal split.

“There,” Ty said in a whisper, pointing to where a dark hole opened up in the rocky wall of the bluff that rose to divide the beach from the highway. Tumbled piles of rock jutted out into the ocean, where waves broke around them, casting silvery-white spray high into the air.

The sand had given way to rocky reef. They picked their way carefully across it, even Ty, who bent to examine something in a tide pool. He straightened with a smile and a starfish in his hand.

“Ty,” said Livvy. “Put it back, unless you’re planning on throwing it at Zara.”

“Waste of a perfectly good starfish,” muttered Kit, and Ty laughed. The salt air had tangled his arrow-straight black hair, and his eyes glowed like the moonlight on the water. Kit just stared, unable to think of anything else clever to say, as Ty gently placed the starfish back in its tide pool.

They made it to the cave opening without any other stops for wildlife. Livvy went in first, with Ty and Kit following. Kit paused as the darkness of the cave enveloped him.

“I can’t see,” he said, trying to fight his rising panic. He hated the pitch dark, but then who didn’t?

Light burst around him like the sudden appearance of a falling star. It was witchlight; Ty was holding it. “Do you want a Night Vision rune?” Livvy asked, her hand on her stele.

Kit shook his head. “No runes,” he said. He wasn’t sure why he was insisting. It wasn’t as if the iratze had hurt. It just seemed like the final hurdle, the last admission that he was a Shadowhunter, not just a boy with Shadowhunter blood who had decided to make the Institute a way station while he figured out a better plan.

Whatever that plan might be. Kit tried not to brood on it as they advanced deeper into the tunnels.

“Do you think this is part of the convergence?” he heard Livvy whisper.

Ty shook his head. “No. The bluffs of the coast are riddled with caves, always have been. I mean, anything could be down here—nests of demons, vampires—but I don’t think this has anything to do with Malcolm. And the ley lines are nowhere near here.”

“I really wish you hadn’t said ‘nests of demons,’ ” said Kit. “It makes them sound like spiders.”

“Some demons are spiders,” said Ty. “The biggest one ever reported was twenty feet tall and had yard-long mandibles.”

Kit thought of the giant praying mantis demons that had ripped his father apart. It was hard to think of anything witty to say about a giant spider when you’d seen the white of your father’s rib cage.

“Shh.” Livvy held up a hand. “I hear voices.”

Kit strained his ears, but heard nothing. He suspected there was another rune he was lacking, something that would give him Superman hearing. He could see lights moving up ahead, though, around the curve of the tunnel.

They moved ahead, Kit staying to the rear of Ty and Livvy. The tunnel opened out into a massive chamber, a room with cracked granite walls, a packed-earth floor, and a smell of mold and decay. The ceiling rose into blackness.

There was a wooden table and two chairs in the middle of the room. The only light came from rune-stones placed on the table; one chair was occupied by Zara. Kit pressed himself instinctively back against the wall; on the other side of the tunnel, Livvy and Ty did the same.

Zara was examining some papers she’d spread on the table. There was a bottle of wine and a glass at her elbow. She wasn’t dressed in gear, but in a plain dark suit, her hair drawn back into an impossibly tight bun.

Kit strained to see what she was studying, but he was too far away. He could read some words etched into the table, though: FIRE WANTS TO BURN. He had no idea what they meant. Zara didn’t seem to be doing anything interesting, either; maybe she just came here to have privacy for her reading. Maybe she was secretly tired of Perfect Diego and was hiding. Who could blame her?

Zara looked up, her eyebrows creasing. Someone was coming—Kit heard the quick tread of feet, and a tousle-haired figure in jeans appeared at the far end of the room.

“It’s Manuel,” Livvy whispered. “Maybe they’re having an affair?”

“Manu,” Zara said, frowning. She didn’t sound lovelorn. “You’re late.”

“Sorry.” Manuel grinned a disarming grin and grabbed for the free chair, swinging it around so he could seat himself with his arms folded over the back. “Don’t be cross, Zara. I had to wait until Rayan and Jon fell asleep—they were in a chatty mood, and I didn’t want to chance anyone seeing me leave the Institute.” He indicated the papers. “What have you got there?”

“Updates from my father,” Zara said. “He was disappointed about the outcome of the last Council, obviously. The decision to let that half-breed Mark Blackthorn remain among decent Nephilim would offend anyone.”

Manuel picked up her glass of wine. Red lights glinted in its depths. “Still, we must look to the future,” he said. “Getting rid of Mark wasn’t the point of our journey here, after all. He’s a minor annoyance, like his siblings.”

Ty, Kit, and Livvy exchanged confused looks. Livvy’s face was tight with anger. Ty’s was expressionless, but his hands moved restlessly at his sides.

“True. The first step is the Registry,” Zara said. She patted the papers, making them rustle. “My father says the Cohort is strong in Idris, and they believe the Los Angeles Institute is ripe for the plucking. The incident with Malcolm sowed considerable doubt in the West Coast’s ability to make judgments. And the fact that the High Warlock of Los Angeles and the head of the local vampire clan both turned out to be enmeshed in dark magic—”

“That wasn’t our fault,” Livvy whispered. “There was no way to possibly know—”

Ty shushed her, but Kit had missed the last of what Zara was saying. He was only conscious of her grin like a dark red slash across her face.

“Confidence isn’t very high,” she finished.

“And Arthur?” said Manuel. “The putative head of the place? Not that I’ve laid eyes on him once.”

“A lunatic,” said Zara. “My father told me he suspected as much. He knew him at the Academy. I talked to Arthur myself. He thought I was someone named Amatis.”

Kit glanced at Livvy, who gave a puzzled shrug.

“It will be easy enough to put him up in front of the Council and prove he’s a madman,” said Zara. “I can’t say who’s been running the Institute in his stead—Diana, I imagine—but if she’d wanted the head position, she’d have taken it already.”

“So your father steps in, the Cohort makes sure he carries the vote, and the Institute is his,” said Manuel.

“Ours,” Zara corrected. “I will run the Institute by his side. He trusts me. We’ll be a team.”

Manuel didn’t seem impressed. He’d probably heard it before. “And then, the Registry.”

“Absolutely. We’ll be able to propose it as Law immediately, and once it passes, we can begin the identifications.” Zara’s eyes glittered. “Every Downworlder will wear the sign.”

Kit’s stomach lurched. This was close enough to mundane history to make him taste bile in the back of his throat.

“We can start at the Shadow Market,” said Zara. “The creatures congregate there. If we take enough of them into custody, we should be able to seize the rest for registration soon enough.”

“And if they’re not inclined to be registered, then they can be convinced easily enough with a little pain,” said Manuel.

Zara frowned. “I think you enjoy the torture, Manu.”

He leaned forward, elbows on the table, his face open and handsome and charming. “I think you do too, Zara. I’ve seen you admiring my work.” He flexed his fingers. “You just don’t want to admit it in front of Perfect Diego.”

“Seriously? They call him that too?” Kit muttered under his breath.

Zara tossed her head, but Manuel was grinning.

“You’re going to have to tell him eventually, about the Cohort’s full plans,” he said. “You know he won’t approve. He’s a Downworlder-lover if there ever was one.”

Zara made a disgusted noise. “Nonsense. He’s nothing like that disgusting Alec Lightwood and his stupid Alliance and his repulsive demon-spawn boyfriend. The Blackthorns may be faerie-loving morons, but Diego’s just . . . confused.”

“What about Emma Carstairs?”

Zara began gathering up the pages of her father’s letter. She didn’t look at Manuel. “What about her?”

“Everyone says she’s the best Shadowhunter since Jace Herondale,” said Manuel. “A title I know you’ve long coveted for yourself.”

“Vanessa Ashdown says she’s a boy-crazy slut,” said Zara, and the ugly words seemed to echo off the rock walls. Kit thought of Emma with her sword, Emma saving his life, Emma hugging Cristina and looking at Julian like he hung the moon, and he wondered if he could get away with stomping on Zara’s foot the next time he saw her. “And I haven’t been particularly impressed by her in person. She’s quite, quite ordinary.”

“I’m sure she is,” said Manuel as Zara rose to her feet, papers in hand. “I still don’t understand what you see in Diego.”

“You wouldn’t. It’s a family alliance.”

“An arranged marriage? How mundane and medieval.” Manuel grabbed for the rune-stones on the table, and for a moment the light in the room seemed to dance, a wild pattern of shine and shadow. “So, are we heading back?”

“We’d better. If anyone sees us, we can say we were checking the wards.” Zara crumpled the pages of her father’s letter and stuffed them into her pocket. “The Council meets soon. My father will read out my letter to him there, stating Arthur Blackthorn’s inability to run an Institute, and then announce his own candidacy.”

“They won’t know what hit them,” said Manuel, sliding his hands into his pockets. “And when it’s all over, of course . . .”

“Don’t worry,” Zara said irritably. “You’ll get what you want. Though it would be better if you were more committed to the cause.”

She had already turned away; Kit saw Manuel’s eyes glint beneath his lashes as he looked after her. There was something in his expression—an unpleasant sort of hunger, though whether it was desire for Zara or something far more arcane, Kit couldn’t tell. “Oh, I’m committed,” said Manuel. “I’d like to see the world burned clean of Downworlders as much as you, Zara. I just don’t believe in doing something for nothing.”

Zara glanced back over her shoulder as she moved into the corridor Manuel had used as an entrance. “It won’t be nothing, Manu,” she said. “I can promise you that.”

And they were gone, leaving Kit, Ty, and Livvy to huddle together in the mouth of the tunnel, stunned into silence.

* * *

The sound that woke Cristina was so faint she thought at first she might have imagined it. She lay, still tired, blinking against the foggy sunlight. She wondered how long it would be until sundown, when they could navigate by the stars again.

The sound came again, a sweet far-calling cry, and she sat up, shaking her hair back. It was wet with dew. She combed her fingers through it, wishing for something to tie it back with. She hardly ever wore her hair down like this, and the weight against her neck was bothersome.

She could see Julian and Emma, both asleep, hunched figures on the ground. But where was Mark? His blanket was discarded, his boots lying beside it. The sight of the boots made her scramble up to her feet: They’d all been sleeping with their shoes on, just in case. Why would he take his off?

She thought about waking up Emma, but likely she was being ridiculous: He’d probably just gone for a walk. She reached to pull her butterfly knife out of her weapons belt and started down the hill, moving past Jules and Emma as she did. She saw with a sort of pang at her heart that their hands, between them, were clasped: Somehow they’d found their way toward each other in sleep. She wondered if she should reach down, gently separate them. But no, she couldn’t do that. There was no way to gently separate Jules and Emma. The mere action of separating them at all was like an act of violence, a tear in the fabric of the world.

There was still heavy mist everywhere, and the sun pierced through it dimly in several places, creating a glowing white veil she could see through only in patches. “Mark?” she called softly. “Mark, where are you?”

She caught the sound she had heard before again, and now it was clearer: music. The sound of a pipe, the twang of a harp string. She strained to hear more—and then nearly screamed as something touched her shoulder. She whirled and saw Mark in front of her, holding his hands up as if to ward her off.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said.

“Mark,” she breathed, and then paused. “Are you Mark? Faeries weave illusions, don’t they?”

He cocked his head to the side. His blond hair fell across his forehead. She remembered when it had hit his shoulders, as if he were the illustration of a faerie prince in a book. Now it was short, soft and curling. She had given him a modern haircut, and it seemed odd suddenly, out of place in Faerie. “I cannot hear my heart or what it tells me,” he said. “I can only hear the wind.”

It was one of the first things he had ever said to her.

“It is you,” she said, exhaling with relief. “What are you doing? Why aren’t you sleeping? We need to rest, if we are to arrive at the Unseelie Court by moon’s rise.”

“Can’t you hear the music?” he said. It was louder now, the very clear sounds of fiddles and woodwinds, and the sound of dancing, too—laughter, and the stamp of feet. “It’s a revel.”

Cristina’s heart skipped a beat. Faerie revels were things out of legend. The Fair Folk danced to enchanted music, and drank enchanted wine, and sometimes they would dance for days. The food they ate made you delirious or love-struck or mad . . . it could pierce your dreams . . . .

“You should go back to sleep,” Mark said. “Revels can be dangerous.”

“I’ve always wanted to see one.” A surge of rebellion went through her. “I’m going to go closer.”

“Cristina, don’t.” He sounded breathless as she turned and moved down the hill toward the noise. “It’s the music—it’s making you want to dance—”

She whirled around, a curl of black hair sticking to her damp cheek. “You brought us here,” she said, and then she plunged on, toward the music, and it rose up and surrounded her, and she could hear Mark, swearing but following after her.

She reached a field at the foot of the hill and stopped to stare. The field was full of blurred, colorful movement. All around her the music echoed, piercingly sweet.

And everywhere, of course, there were Fair Folk. A troupe of faeries in the center of the dancers, playing their instruments, their heads thrown back, their feet stamping the ground. There were green-skinned wood faeries dancing, with gnarled hands and eyes that glowed yellow as sap. Faeries blue and green and shimmering as water, with hair like transparent netting cascading down to their feet. Beautiful girls with flowers wound through their hair, tied around their waists and throats, whose feet were hooves: pretty boys in ragged clothes with fever-bright eyes who held out their hands as they spun by.

“Come and dance,” they called. “Come and dance, beautiful girl, chica bella, come and dance with us.”

Cristina began to move toward them, toward the music and the dancing. The field was still clouded with fog, carving its streaks of white across the ground and hiding the blue of the sky. The mist glowed as she moved into it, heavy with strange scents: fruit and wine and incense-like smoke.

She began to dance, moving her body to the music’s rhythm. Exhilaration seemed to pour into her with every breath she took in. She was suddenly no longer the girl who had let Diego Rosales fool her not once, but twice, not the girl who followed rules and trusted people until they broke her trust as casually as knocking a glass off a table. No longer the girl who stood back and let her friends be wild and crazy and waited to catch them when they fell. Now she was the one falling.

Hands seized her, spinning her around. Mark. His eyes were flashing. He pulled her up close against him, his arms slipping around her, but his grip was unyielding with anger. “What are you doing, Cristina?” he asked in a low voice. “You know about faeries, you know this is dangerous.”

“That’s why I’m doing it, Mark.” She hadn’t seen him look so furious since Kieran had come riding up to the Institute with Iarlath and Gwyn. She felt a small, secret pulse of excitement inside her chest, that she could make him that angry.

“They hate Shadowhunters here, don’t you remember?” he said.

“They don’t know I’m a Shadowhunter.”

“Believe me,” said Mark, leaning in close so that she could feel his breath, hot, against her ear. “They know.”

“Then they don’t care,” said Cristina. “It’s a revel. I’ve read about these. Faeries lose themselves in the music, like humans. They dance and they forget, just like us.”

Mark’s hands curved around her waist. It was a protective gesture, she told herself. It didn’t mean anything. But her pulse quickened regardless. When Mark had first arrived at the Institute, he’d been stick-thin, hollow-eyed. Now she could feel muscle over his bones, the hard strength of him against her.

“I never asked you,” he said, as they moved among the crowd. They were close to two girls dancing together; both of them had their black hair bound up in elaborate crowns of berries and acorns. They wore dresses of russet and brown, ribbons around their slim throats, and swished their skirts away from Mark and Cristina, laughing at the couple’s clumsiness. Cristina didn’t mind. “Why faeries? Why did you make that the thing you studied?”

“Because of you.” She tilted her head back to look up at him, saw the surprise that passed across his expressive face. The beginning of the gentle curves of wonder at the corners of his mouth. “Because of you, Mark Blackthorn.”

Me? His lips shaped the word.

“I was in my mother’s rose garden when I heard what had happened to you,” she said. “I was only thirteen. The Dark War was ending, and the Cold Peace had been announced. The whole Shadowhunter world knew of your sister’s exile, and that you had been abandoned. My great-uncle came out to tell me about it. My family always used to joke that I was softhearted, that it was easy to make me cry, and he knew I’d been worrying about you—so he told me, he said, ‘Your lost boy will never be found now.’ ”

Mark swallowed. Emotions passed like storm clouds behind his eyes; not for him Julian’s guardedness, his shields. “And did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Did you cry?” he said. They were still moving together, in the dance, but it was almost mechanical now: Cristina had forgotten the steps her feet were taking, she was aware only of Mark breathing, her fingers locked behind Mark’s neck, Mark in her arms.

“I did not cry,” Cristina said. “But I did decide that I would dedicate myself to eradicating the Cold Peace. It was not a fair Law then. It will never be a fair Law.”

His lips parted. “Cristina—”

A voice like doves interrupted them. Soft, feathery, and light, it crooned, “Drinks, madam and sir? Something to cool you after dancing?”

A faerie with a face like a cat’s—furred and whiskered—stood before them in the tatters of an Edwardian suit. He held a gold plate on which were many small glasses containing liquid of different colors: blue, red, and amber.

“Is it enchanted?” Cristina said breathlessly. “Will it give me strange dreams?”

“It will cool your thirst, lady,” said the faerie. “And all I would ask for in return is a smile from your lips.”

Cristina seized up a glass full of amber fluid. It tasted of passionfruit, sweet and tart—she took one swallow, and Mark dashed the glass from her hand. It fell tinkling at their feet, splashing his hand with liquid. He licked the fluid from his skin, glaring at her all the while.

Cristina backed away. She could feel a pleasant warmth spreading in her chest. The drinks seller was snapping at Mark, who pushed him away with a coin—a mundane penny—and started after Cristina.

“Stop,” he said. “Cristina, slow down, you’re going toward the center of the revel—the music will only be stronger there—”

She stopped, held out a hand to him. She felt fearless. She knew she ought to be terrified: She had swallowed a faerie drink, and anything might happen. But instead she only felt as if she were flying. She was soaring free, only Mark here to tether her to the ground. “Dance with me,” she said.

He caught at her. He looked angry, still, but he held her tightly nonetheless. “You’ve had enough dancing. And drinking.”

“Enough dancing?” It was the girls in russet again, their red mouths laughing. Other than their different-colored eyes, they looked nearly identical. One of them pulled the ribbon from around her throat—Cristina stared; her neck was horribly scarred, as if her head had nearly been severed from her body. “Dance together,” the girl said—nearly spat it, as if it were a curse, and looped the ribbon around Mark’s and Cristina’s wrists, binding them together. “Enjoy the binding, Hunter.” She grinned at Mark, and her teeth were black, as if they had been painted that color, and sharp as needles.

Cristina gasped, stumbling back, pulling Mark after her, the ribbon connecting them. It stretched like a rubber band, not breaking or fraying. Mark caught up to her, seizing her hand in his, his fingers threaded through hers.

He drew her after him, fast and sure-footed on the uneven terrain, finding the breaks in the heavy mist. They pushed between dancing couples until the grass under them was no longer trampled and the music was faint in their ears.

Mark veered to the side, making for a copse of trees. He slipped under the branches, holding the low-hanging ones aside to let Cristina in after him. Once she had ducked underneath, he released them, closing them both into a dirt-floored space beneath the trees, hidden from the outside world by long branches, laden with fruit, that touched the ground.

Mark sat down, drawing a knife from his belt. “Come here,” he said, and when Cristina came to sit beside him, he took her hand and slashed apart the ribbon binding them.

It made a little shrieking, hurt sound, like a wounded animal, but frayed and gave. He let go of Cristina and dropped the knife. Faint sunlight filtered down through the branches above, and in the dim illumination, the ribbon still around his wrist looked like blood.

The ribbon was looped around Cristina’s wrist as well, no longer burning, trailing its lonely end in the dirt. She worried at it with her nails until it came free and fell to the ground. Her fingers kept slipping. Probably the faerie drink, still in her system, she thought.

She glanced over at Mark. His face was drawn, his gold and blue eyes shadowed. “That could have been very bad,” he said, casting the rest of his ribbon aside. “A binding spell like that can tie two people together and send one of them mad, make them drown themselves and pull the other in after them.”

“Mark,” Cristina said. “I’m sorry. I should have listened to you. You know more about revels than I do. You have experience. I only have the books I read.”

“No,” he said unexpectedly. “I wanted to go too. I liked dancing with you. It was good to be there with someone . . .”

“Human?” Cristina said.

The heat in her chest had turned into a strange pinching feeling, a hot pressure that increased when she looked at him. At the curves of his cheekbones, the hollows of his temples. His loose, wheat-colored shirt was open at the throat, and she could see that place she had always thought was the most beautiful spot on a man’s body, the smooth muscle over the clavicle and the vulnerable hollow.

“Yes, human,” he said. “We are all human, I know. But I have almost never known anyone as human as you.”

Cristina felt breathless. The faerie mist had stolen her breath, she thought, that and the enchantment all around them.

“You are kind,” he said, “one of the kindest people I have known. In the Hunt, there was not much kindness. When I think that when the sentence of the Cold Peace was passed, there was someone a thousand miles away from Idris, someone who had never met me but who cried for a boy who had been abandoned . . .”

“I said I didn’t cry.” Cristina’s voice hitched.

Mark’s hand was a pale blur. She felt his fingers against her face. They came away wet, shining in the mist-light. “You’re crying now,” he said.

When she caught at his hand, it was damp with her own tears. And when she leaned toward him through the mist, and kissed him, she tasted salt.

For a moment Mark was startled, unmoving, and Cristina felt a spear of terror go through her, worse than the sight of any demon. That Mark might not want this, that he might be horrified . . .

“Cristina,” he said, as she broke away from him, and went up on his knees, his arm coming around her a little awkwardly, his hand burying itself in her hair. “Cristina,” he said again, with a break in his voice, the rough sound of desire.

She put her hands on either side of his face, her palms in the hollows of his cheeks, and marveled at the softness where Diego had had stubble, rough against her skin. She let him come to her this time, closing her into the circle of his left arm, fitting his mouth to hers.

Stars exploded behind her eyelids. Not just any stars, but the many-colored stars of Faerie. She saw clouds and constellations; she tasted night air on his mouth. His lips moved frantically against hers. He was still whispering her name, incoherent between kisses. His free hand slid over her waist, up her side. He groaned when her fingers found their way into the neck of his shirt and brushed along his collarbone, touched the beating pulse in his throat.

He said something in a language she didn’t know, and then he was flat on the ground and she was over him, and he was pulling her down, hands fierce on her back and her shoulders, and she wondered if this was how it had always been for him with Kieran, fierce and ungentle. She remembered seeing them kiss in the desert behind the Institute, and how it had been a frantic thing, a clash of bodies, and it had sparked desire in her then and did again now.

He arched up and she heard him gasp as she slid down his body, kissing his throat, then his chest through his shirt, and then her fingers were on his buttons and she heard him laugh breathlessly, saying her name, and then, “I never thought you’d even look at me, not someone like you, Shadowhunter royalty—like a princess—”

“It’s amazing what a bit of enchanted faerie drink will do.” She meant to sound teasing, lighthearted. But Mark went still under her. A moment later he had moved, quick and graceful, and was sitting at least a foot from her, his hands up as if to hold her away.

“Faerie drink?” he echoed.

Cristina looked at him in surprise. “The sweet drink the cat-faced man gave to me. You tasted it.”

“There was nothing in it,” Mark said, with uncharacteristic sharpness. “I knew the moment I put my lips to my skin. It was only brambleberry juice, Cristina.”

Cristina recoiled slightly, both from his anger and from the realization that there had been no blurring cloak of magic over the things she’d just done.

“But I thought—”

“You thought you were kissing me because you were intoxicated,” Mark said. “Not because you wanted to, or because you actually like me.”

“But I do like you.” She rose to her knees, but Mark was already on his feet. “I have since I met you.”

“Is that why you got together with Diego?” Mark said, and then shook his head, backing up. “Maybe I can’t do this.”

“Do what?” Cristina staggered upright.

“Be with a human who lies,” Mark said, uninflected.

“But you’ve lied too,” said Cristina. “You’ve lied about being with Emma.”

“And you’ve taken part in that same lie.”

“Because it has to be told,” Cristina said. “For both their sakes. If Julian wasn’t in love with her, then he wouldn’t need to think—”

She broke off, then, as Mark went white in the shadows. “What did you say?”

Cristina put her hand to her mouth. The fact of Emma and Julian’s feelings for each other was so rooted in what she knew about them that it was hard to remember others didn’t know. It was so clear in their every word and gesture, even now; how could Mark not know?

“But they’re parabatai,” he said, bewildered. “It’s illegal. The punishment—Julian wouldn’t. He just wouldn’t.”

“I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. I was just guessing—”

“You weren’t guessing,” Mark said, and turned away from her, shoving his way out through the branches of the trees.

Cristina went after him. He had to understand he couldn’t say anything to Julian. Her betrayal weighted her heart like a stone, her sense of humiliation forgotten in her fear for Emma, her realization of what she’d done. She pushed through the tree branches, the dry-edged leaves scratching at her skin. A moment later, she was outside on the green hill, and she saw Julian.

* * *

The music woke Jules, the music and an enveloping sense of warmth. He hadn’t been warm in so long, not even at night, bundled in blankets.

He blinked his eyes open. He could hear music in the distance, weaving feathery tendrils across the sky. He turned his head to the side and saw with a jolt of familiarity Emma beside him, her head on her jacket. Their hands were clasped on the grass between them, his tanned fingers wrapped tightly around her smaller ones.

He drew his hand back fast, his heart pounding, and scrambled to his feet. He wondered if he’d reached for her in his sleep, or had she reached for him? No, she wouldn’t have reached for him. She had Mark. She might have kissed him, Julian, but it was Mark’s name she’d said.

He’d thought he would be all right, sleeping this close to her, but apparently he’d been wrong. His hand still felt as if it were burning, but the rest of his body was cold again. Emma murmured and turned, her blond hair falling over her hand, now curled palm-up on the grass as if she were reaching out for him.

He couldn’t stand it. He seized his jacket up off the ground, shrugged it on, and went to look out from the hill. Maybe he could tell how close they were to the foot of the mountains. How long it would take them to reach the Unseelie Court and end this insane mission. Not that he blamed Mark; he didn’t. Kieran was like family to Mark, and Julian understood family better than he understood almost anything else.

But he was already worried about the children at the Institute, whether they would be furious, panicked, unforgiving. He’d never left them before. Never.

The wind changed and the music picked up. Julian found himself at the edge of the hill looking down at a vista of green grass, dotted here and there with copses of trees that swept down to a cleared space where a blur of color and movement was visible.

Dancers. They were moving in time to the thrum of a music that seemed to well up from inside the earth. It was insistent, demanding. It called to you to join it, to be swept up and carried the way that a wave might carry you from sea to shore.

Julian felt the pull, though it was distant enough not to be uncomfortable. His fingers ached for his paintbrushes, though. Everywhere he looked he saw an intensity of color and movement that made him wish he was in his studio in front of his easel. He felt as if he were looking at pictures where the colors had been adjusted for maximum saturation. The leaves and grass were intently, almost poisonously green. Fruit was brighter than jewelry. The birds that dipped and dove through the air had plumage so wildly colorful it made Julian wonder if nothing here hunted them—if they had no other purpose but beauty and display.

“What’s wrong?” He turned around and saw her just behind him on the ridge of the hill. Emma. Her long hair untied and flying around her like a sheet of metal hammered thin. His heart lurched, feeling a pull far more insistent than that of faerie music.

“Nothing.” His voice came out rougher than he’d intended. “Just looking for Mark and Cristina. Once I find them, we should go. We’ve got a lot more walking to do.”

She moved toward him, her expression wistful. The sun was raying down through the clouds, lighting her hair to rich waves of saffron. Julian clenched his hand tightly, refusing to let himself raise his fingers, to bury them in the pale hair that Emma usually undid only at night. That spoke to Julian of the moments of peace between twilight and nightfall when the children were asleep and he was alone with Emma, moments of soft speech and intimacy that far predated any realization on his part that they were anything more than parabatai. In the curve of her sleeping face, in the fall of her hair, in the shadows of her lashes against her cheeks, was a peace he had only rarely known.

“Do you hear the music?” she asked, taking a step closer. Close enough to touch. Julian wondered if this was how drug addicts felt. Wanting what they knew they shouldn’t have. Thinking, Just this once won’t matter.

“Emma, don’t,” he said. He didn’t know what he was asking, exactly. Don’t be close to me, I can’t bear it. Don’t look at me like that. Don’t be everything I want and can’t have. Don’t make me forget you’re Mark’s and anyway you could never be mine.

“Please,” she said. She looked at him with wide, pained eyes. “Please, I need . . .”

The part of Julian that could never withstand being needed unlocked his clenched hands, his braced feet. He was inside the sphere of her presence in seconds, their bodies almost colliding. He put a hand against her cheek. She wasn’t wearing Cortana, he noticed with a distant puzzlement. Why had she left it behind?

Her eyes flashed. She raised herself onto her toes, tilting up her face. Her lips moved, but he couldn’t hear what she was saying over the roaring in his own ears. He remembered being knocked down by a wave once, pressed to the bottom of the ocean, breathless and unable to get up. There had been a terror in it, but also a sense of letting go: Something more powerful was carrying him, and he no longer needed to fight.

Her arms were around his neck, her lips on his, and he let go, surrendering. His whole body contracted, his heart racing, exploding, veins thrumming with blood and energy. He caught her up against him, small and strong in his arms. He gasped, unable to breathe, tasting the sweet-sharpness of blood.

But not Emma. He couldn’t taste Emma, the familiarity of her, and the scent of her was different too. Gone was the sweetness of sun-warmed skin, of the herbs in her soap and shampoo, the scent of gear and gold and girl.

You didn’t grow up with someone, dream of them, let them shape your soul and put their fingerprints on your heart, and not know when the person you were kissing wasn’t them. Julian yanked himself away, wiping the back of his hand across his mouth. Blood smeared his knuckles.

He was looking at a faerie woman, her skin smooth and pale, an unmarked, unwrinkled canvas. She was grinning, her lips red. Her hair was the color of cobwebs—it was cobwebs, gray and fine and drifting. She could have been any age at all. Her only clothes were a ragged black shift. She was beautiful and also hideous.

“You delight me, Shadowhunter,” she crooned. “Will you not come back to my arms for more kisses?”

She reached out. Julian stumbled back. He had never in his life kissed anyone but Emma; he felt sick now, in his heart and guts. He wanted to reach for a seraph blade, to burn the air between them, to feel the familiar heat race up his arm and through his veins and cauterize his nausea.

His hand had only just closed around the hilt of the blade when he remembered: It wouldn’t work here.

“Leave him alone!” someone shouted. “Get away from my brother, leanansídhe!”

It was Mark. He was emerging from a copse of trees with Cristina just behind him. There was a dagger in his hand.

The faerie woman laughed. “Your weapons will not work in this realm, Shadowhunter.”

There was a click, and Cristina’s folding knife bloomed open in her hand. “Come and speak your words of challenge to my blade, barrow-woman.”

The faerie pulled back with a hiss, and Julian saw his own blood on her teeth. He felt light-headed with sickness and anger. She whirled and was gone in a moment, a gray-black blur racing down the hill.

The music had stopped. The dancers, too, had begun to scatter: The sun was setting, the shadows thick across the ground. Whatever kind of revel it had been, it was one that apparently was not friendly to nightfall.

“Julian, brother.” Mark hurried forward, his eyes concerned. “You look ill—sit down, drink some water—”

A soft whistle came from farther up the hill. Julian turned. Emma was standing on the ridge, buckling on Cortana. He saw the relief on her face as she caught sight of them.

“I wondered where you’d gone,” she said, hurrying down the hill. Her smile as she looked at them all was hopeful. “I was worried you’d eaten faerie fruit and were running naked around the greensward.”

“No nudity,” said Julian. “No greensward.”

Emma tightened the strap on Cortana. Her hair had been pulled back into a long braid, only a few pale tendrils escaping. She looked around at their tense faces, her brown eyes wide. “Is everything okay?”

Julian could still feel the fingerprints of the leanansídhe all over him. He knew what leanansídhe were—wild faeries who took the shape of whatever you wanted to see, seduced you, and fed on your blood and skin.

At least he was the only one who would have seen Emma. Mark and Cristina would have seen the leanansídhe in her true form. That was one humiliation and danger spared them all.

“Everything’s fine,” he said. “We’d better get going. The stars are just coming out, and we’ve got a long way still to go.”

* * *

“All right,” Livvy said, pausing in front of a narrow wooden door. It didn’t look much like the rest of the Institute, glass and metal and modernity. It seemed like a warning. “Here we go.”

She didn’t look eager.

They’d decided—with Kit mostly as silent onlooker—to go directly to Arthur Blackthorn’s office. Even if it was two in the morning, even if he didn’t want to be bothered with Centurion business, he needed to know what Zara was planning.

She was after the Institute, Livvy had explained as they scrambled back along the beach and rocks to where they’d started. Surely that’s why she’d said what she had about Arthur—clearly she’d tell any lie.

Kit had never thought about Institutes much—they’d always struck him as something like police stations, buzzy hives of Shadowhunters meant to keep an eye on specific locations. It seemed they were more like small city-states: in charge of a certain area, but run by a family appointed by the Council in Idris.

“There’s seriously an entire private country that’s just Shadowhunters?” Kit demanded as they headed up the road to the Institute, rising like a shadow against the mountains behind it.

“Yes,” said Livvy tersely. In other words, Shut up and listen. Kit had the feeling she was processing what was happening by explaining it to him. He shut up and let her.

An Institute was run by a head, whose family lived with him or her; they also housed families who’d lost members, or Nephilim orphans—of whom there were many. The head of an Institute had significant power: Most Consuls were chosen from that pool, and they could propose new Laws, which would be passed if a vote went their way.

All Institutes were just as empty as the Los Angeles one. In fact, it was unusually crowded at the moment, due to the Centurion presence. They were meant to be that way, in case they needed to house a battalion of Shadowhunters at any moment. There was no staff, as there was no need of one: Shadowhunters who worked for the Institute, called the Conclave, were spread out all over the city in their own houses.

Not that there were many of them either, Livvy added grimly. So many had died in the war five years ago. But if Zara’s father were to become the head of the Los Angeles Institute, not only would he be able to propose his bigoted Law, but the Blackthorns would be thrown out on their ears with nowhere to go but Idris.

“Is Idris so bad?” Kit had asked as they went up the stairs. Not that he wanted to be shipped off to Idris. He was just getting used to the Institute. Not that he’d want to stay in it if Zara’s father took over—not if he was anything like Zara.

Livvy glanced at Ty, who hadn’t interrupted her during her tirade. “Idris is fine. Great, even. But this is where we live.”

They’d reached the door to Arthur’s office then, and everything had gone silent. Kit wondered if he should just lead the way. He didn’t care particularly if he annoyed Arthur Blackthorn or not.

Ty looked at the door with troubled eyes. “We’re not supposed to bother Uncle Arthur. We promised Jules.”

“We have to,” Livvy said simply, and pushed the door open.

A narrow set of stairs led to a shadowy room under the eaves of the house. There was a cluster of desks, each with a lamp on it—so many lamps the room was filled with brilliance. Every book, every piece of paper with scrawled writing, every plate with half-eaten food on it, was harshly illuminated.

A man sat at one of the desks. He wore a long bathrobe over a ragged sweater and jeans; his feet were bare. The robe had probably once been blue, but was now a sort of dirty white from many washings. He was clearly a Blackthorn—his mostly gray hair curled like Julian’s did, and his eyes were a brilliant blue-green.

They went past Livvy and Ty and fastened on Kit.

“Stephen,” he said, and dropped the pen he was holding. It hit the ground, spilling ink in a dark pool over the floorboards.

Livvy’s mouth was partly open. Ty was pressed against the wall. “Uncle Arthur, that’s Kit,” said Livvy. “Kit Herondale.”

Arthur chuckled dryly. “Herondale, indeed,” he said. His eyes seemed to burn: There was a look of sickness in them, like the heat of a fever. He rose to his feet and came over to Kit, staring down into his face. “Why did you follow Valentine?” he said. “You, who had everything? ‘Yea, is not even Apollo, with hair and harpstring of gold, a bitter God to follow, a beautiful God to behold?’ ” He smelled bitter, of old coffee. Kit took a step back. “What kind of Herondale will you be?” Arthur whispered. “William or Tobias? Stephen or Jace? Beautiful, bitter, or both?”

“Uncle,” said Ty. He pitched his voice loud, though it shook slightly. “We need to talk to you. About the Centurions. They want to take the Institute. They don’t want you to be head of it anymore.”

Arthur whirled on Ty with a fierce look—almost a glare, but not quite. Then he began to laugh. “Is that true? Is it?” he demanded. The laughter built and seemed to break in almost a sob. He whirled around and sat heavily down in his desk chair. “What a joke,” he said savagely.

“It’s not a joke,” Livvy began.

“They want to take the Institute from me,” Arthur said. “As if I hold it! I’ve never run an Institute in my life, children. He does everything—writes the correspondence, plans the meetings, speaks with the Council.”

“Who does everything?” said Kit, though he knew he had no place in the conversation.

“Julian.” The voice was Diana’s; she was standing at the top of the attic stairs, looking around the room as if the brightness of the light surprised her. Her expression was resigned. “He means Julian.”