Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices 1)

The moon was high and full in the sky when Mark brought the motorcycle to a gentle stop in the sand behind the Institute.

The trip into the city had been all panic, Livvy gripping on to Cristina's belt with small, worried hands, Ty telling Mark not to go too fast, the freeway disappearing under their feet. They'd nearly crashed into the Dumpster in the parking lot.

The way back was quiet, Cristina holding Mark lightly around the waist, thinking about how close they seemed to be flying to the clouds. The city below them was an interlocking pattern of colored lights. Cristina had always hated amusement park rides and airplane flights, but this was like neither of those: She felt a part of the air, buoyed up by it like a small craft on the water.

Mark slid off the cycle and held out his hand to help her down after him. She took it, her eyes still full of the sight of the Santa Monica Pier below them, the bright lights of the turning Ferris wheel. She'd never felt so far away from her mother, from the Institute in Mexico City, from the Rosaleses.

She liked it.

"My lady," he said as her feet touched the sand.

She felt her lips curl up. "That seems so formal."

"The Courts are nothing if not formal," he agreed. "Thank you for coming back with me. You didn't have to."

"You seemed like maybe you didn't want to be alone," Cristina said. The soft wind was blowing off the desert, moving the sand, lifting his newly cut hair away from his face. Short now, it looked like a halo, so pale blond as to be almost silver.

"You see a great deal." His eyes studied her face. She wondered what he had looked like when both of his eyes had been Blackthorn eyes, blue-green as the sea. She wondered if the strangeness of his eyes, now, added to his beauty.

"When no one you know tells the truth, you learn to see under the surface," she said, and thought of her mother and the yellow petals of roses.

"Yes," he said. "But then, I come from a place where everyone tells the truth, no matter how dreadful."

"Is that something you miss about Faerie?" Cristina asked. "That there were no lies there?"

"How did you know I miss Faerie?"

"Your heart is not settled here," said Cristina. "And I think it is more than just familiarity that draws you back. You spoke of feeling free there--but then you also said that they cut runes into your back. I am trying to understand how that can be something you could miss."

"That was the Unseelie Court, not the Hunt," said Mark. "And I cannot speak of what I miss. I cannot speak of the Hunt, not truly. It is forbidden."

"That is terrible. How can you choose if you cannot speak of your choice?"

"The world is terrible," said Mark tonelessly. "And some are drawn down into it and drown there, and some rise above and carry others with them. But not very many. Not everyone can be Julian."

"Julian?" Cristina was startled. "But I thought perhaps you didn't even like him. I thought--"

"You thought?" He arched his silvery eyebrows.

"I thought you didn't like any of us," she said sheepishly. It seemed a foolish thing to say, but his face softened. He reached to take her hand, brushing his own fingers along her palm. A shiver raced up her arm--the touch of his hand was like an electric current.

"I like you," he said. "Cristina Mendoza Rosales. I like you very much."

He leaned down toward her. His eyes filled her vision, blue and gold--

"Mark Blackthorn." The voice that spoke his name was sharp, clipped. Both Cristina and Mark whirled around.

The tall faerie warrior who had brought Mark to the Institute stood in front of them, as if he had simply evolved out of the black-and-white sand and sky. He looked black and white himself, his hair the color of ink, curling darkly against his temples. His silver eye glowed in the moonlight; his black eye looked pupil-less. He wore a gray tunic and trousers, and daggers at his belt. He was as inhumanly lovely as a statue.

"Kieran," said Mark, a sort of half-shocked exhale. "But I--"

"Should have expected me." Kieran stalked forward. "You asked to borrow my steed; I lent it. The longer I go without it, the more chary Gwyn will grow. Did you hope to raise his suspicions?"

"I intended to return it," Mark said, his voice low.

"Did you?" Kieran crossed his arms over his chest.

"Cristina, go inside," said Mark. He had dropped his hand and was looking at Kieran, not at her, his expression fixed.

"Mark--"

"Please," he said. "This is--if you respect my privacy, please, go inside."

She hesitated. But his expression was clear. He knew what he was asking. She turned and went in through the Institute's back door, letting it bang loudly shut behind her.

The stairs loomed up in front of her, but she couldn't climb them. She barely knew Mark Blackthorn. But as she went to put her foot on the first step, she thought of the scars on his back. Of the way he had curled into a ball in his bedroom that first day, the way he had accused Julian of being a dream or a nightmare sent to haunt him by the Wild Hunt.

She didn't believe in the Cold Peace, had never believed in it, but Mark's pain had torn away at her beliefs. Perhaps the faeries truly were that cruel. Perhaps there really was no good in them, no honor. And if that was the case, how could she leave Mark out there, alone, with one of them?

She whirled around and pushed the door open--and froze.

It took a moment for her gaze to find them, but when it did, Mark and Kieran seemed to leap out at her like the images from a lighted screen. They stood in a patch of moonlight at the edge of the lot, Mark's back against one of the scrub oak trees. Kieran was leaning against him, pinning him to the tree, and they were kissing.

Cristina hesitated a moment, blood rising into her face, but it was clear Mark wasn't being touched against his will. Mark's hands were tangled in Kieran's hair, and he was kissing him as fiercely as if he were starving. Their bodies were pressed together tightly; nevertheless, Kieran clutched at Mark's waist, his hands moving restlessly, desperately, as if he could pull Mark closer still. They slid up, pushing Mark's jacket off his shoulders, stroking the skin at the edge of his collar. He made a low keening sound, like a cry of grief, deep in his throat, and broke away.

He was staring at Mark, his gaze as hungry as it was hopeless. Never had a faerie looked so human to Cristina as Kieran did then. Mark looked back at him, eyes wide, shining in the moonlight. A shared look of love and longing and terrible sadness. It was too much. It had already been too much: Cristina knew she shouldn't have been watching them but she hadn't been able to stop, mingled shock and fascination rooting her to the spot.

And desire. There was desire, too. Whether for Mark, or for both of them, or just for the idea of wanting someone so much, she wasn't sure. She moved back, her heart pounding, about to pull the door shut after her--

And the whole parking lot lit up like a stadium as a car rounded the corner and turned into it. Music blared out the windows; Cristina could hear Emma's and Julian's voices.

Her gaze darted back toward Mark and Kieran, but Kieran had vanished, a shadow into shadows. Mark was bending down to pick up his jacket as Emma and the others piled out of the car.

Cristina pulled the door shut. Through it she heard Emma ask Mark where she was, and Mark say that she had gone inside. He sounded casual, calm, as if nothing had happened.

But everything had happened.

She had wondered, when he'd looked in her eyes and said that he'd had to make do without mirrors in the Wild Hunt, whose eyes he'd been looking into for all those years.

Now she

knew.

The Wild hunt, some Years ago

Mark Blackthorn came to the Wild Hunt when he was sixteen years old, and not because he wanted to.

He remembered only darkness after he had been taken from the Institute that was his home, before he woke in underground caverns, amid lichen and dripping moss. A massive man with eyes of two different colors was standing over him, carrying a horned helmet.

Mark recognized him, of course. You couldn't be a Shadowhunter and not know about the Wild Hunt. You couldn't be half-faerie and not have read about Gwyn the Hunter, who had led the hunt for centuries. He wore a long blade of hammered metal at his waist, blackened and twisted as if it had been through many fires. "Mark Blackthorn," he said, "you are with the Hunt now, for your family is dead. We are your blood kin now." And drawing the sword, he sliced across his palm until he drew blood, and dripped it into water for Mark to drink.

In the years to come Mark would see others come to the Hunt, and Gwyn say the same thing to them, and watch them drink his blood. And he would watch their eyes change, splintering into two different colors as if to symbolize the division of their souls.

Gwyn believed a new recruit had to be broken down to be built back up again as a Hunter, someone who could ride through the night without sleep, someone who could suffer hunger that was close to starvation and endure pain that would break a mundane. And he believed their loyalty must be unswerving. They could choose no one over the Hunt.

Mark gave his loyalty to Gwyn, and his service, but he did not make friends among the Wild Hunt. They were not Shadowhunters, and he was a Shadowhunter. The others were all of the faerie Courts, pressed into service with the Hunt as punishment. They did not like the fact that he was Nephilim, and he felt their scorn and scorned them in turn.

He rode through the nights alone, on a silver mare given to him by Gwyn. Gwyn seemed, perversely, to like him, perhaps to spite the others of the Hunt. He taught Mark to navigate by the stars and to listen for the sounds of a battle that might echo through hundreds, even thousands of miles: cries of anger and the shouts of the dying. They would ride to the field of battle and, invisible to mundane eyes, divest the dead bodies of precious things. Most of them were paid in tribute to the Seelie and Unseelie Courts, but some Gwyn kept for himself.