"But Iarlath hasn't got the power to authorize a faerie convoy to do something on this scale," said Mark. "He's just a courtier, not someone who can order Gwyn around. Who gave the permission for this to happen?"
Kieran shook his dark head. "I don't know. Iarlath did not say. It could have been the King, my father, or it could have been Gwyn--"
"Gwyn would not do that," said Mark. "Gwyn has honor, and he is not cruel."
"What about Malcolm?" Livvy demanded. "I thought he had honor. I thought he was our friend! He loves Tavvy--he's played with him for hours, brought him toys. He couldn't kill him. He couldn't."
"He's responsible for the killing of a dozen people, Livvy," said Julian. "Maybe more."
"People are more than one thing," said Mark, and his eyes brushed over Kieran as he spoke. "Warlocks too."
Emma stood with her hands still on the seraph blades. Julian could feel what she felt, as he always had, as if his own heart mirrored hers--the hot curl of anger rising over a choking sense of despair and loss. More than anything he wanted to reach out to her, but he didn't trust himself to do it in front of everyone else.
They'd be able to see right through him the moment he touched her, see his real feelings. And there was no way he could risk that now, not when his heart was being eaten alive with fear over his little brother, fear he couldn't show in case it demoralized the rest of his siblings.
"Everyone is more than one thing," said Kieran. "We are more than single actions we undertake, whether they be good or evil." His eyes gleamed, silver and black, as he looked at Mark. Even in this room full of Shadowhunter things, the wildness of the Hunt and Faerie clung to Kieran like the scent of rain or leaves. It was the wildness that Julian sometimes sensed in Mark, that had faded since he'd come back to them, but showed itself still in brief flares like gunfire seen from a distance. For a moment they seemed to him two feral things, incongruous in their surroundings.
"The poem that was written on the bodies," Cristina said. "The one that mentioned the black book. The story said it was given to Malcolm in the Unseelie Court."
"So goes the faerie story as well," said Kieran. "At first Malcolm was told that his love had become an Iron Sister. Later he found out that she had been murdered by her family. Walled up alive in a tomb. The knowledge drove him to seek out the King of the Unseelie Court and ask him if there was a way to raise the dead. The King gave him that rhyme. It was instructions--it is only that it took him almost a century to learn how to follow them, and to find the black book."
"That's why the library was destroyed in the attack," said Emma. "So no one would notice the book was missing, if they ever looked for it. So many books were lost."
"But why did Iarlath tell Malcolm that the Followers could kill faeries as well as humans?" said Emma. "If he was really in league with Malcolm--"
"That was something Iarlath wanted. He has many enemies in the Seelie Court. It was an expedient way for him to rid himself of some of them--Malcolm had his Followers slay them, and the murders could not be traced back to Iarlath. For a faerie to kill another of the gentry, that is a dark crime indeed."
"Where is Annabel's body?" asked Livvy. "Wouldn't she be buried in Cornwall? Wouldn't she have been walled up there--in a 'tomb by the sounding sea'?"
"Convergences are places out of space and time," said Kieran. "The convergence itself is neither here nor in Cornwall nor in any real space. It is a between place, like Faerie itself."
"It can probably be entered through Cornwall as well--that would be why those plants grow outside the entrance," said Mark.
"And what is the connection to the poem 'Annabel Lee'?" asked Ty. "The name Annabel, the similarities of the stories--it seems more than coincidence."
The dark-haired faerie prince only shook his head. "I only know what Iarlath told me, and what is part of faerie lore. I did not even know the name Annabel or the mundane poem."
Mark whirled on Kieran. "Where is Iarlath now?"
Kieran's eyes seemed to shimmer when he looked back. "We are wasting time here. We should be getting to the convergence."
"He isn't wrong." Diego was completely kitted out: gear, several swords, an ax, throwing knives at his belt. He wore a black cloak over his gear, pinned at the shoulder with the pin of the Centurions--it bore the pattern of a leafless stick, and the words Primi Ordines. He made Julian feel underdressed. "We must get to the ley line convergence and stop Fade--"
Julian looked around the room, at Emma and Mark, and then at Ty and Livvy, and lastly at Dru. "I know that we have known Malcolm all our lives. But he is a murderer and liar. Warlocks are immortal, but not invulnerable. When you see him, put your blade in his heart."
There was a silence. Emma broke it. "He killed my parents," she said. "I'll be the one to cut out his heart."
Kieran's eyebrows went up, but he said nothing.
"Jules." It was Mark, having moved to stand at Julian's shoulder. His hair, that Cristina had cut, was tangled; there were shadows under his eyes. But there was strength in the hand he laid on Julian's shoulder. "Would you place a rune upon me, brother? For I fear that without them, I will be at a disadvantage in the battle."
Julian's hand went automatically to his stele. Then he paused. "Are you sure?"
Mark nodded. "It is time to let the nightmares go." He pulled the neck of his shirt aside and down, baring his shoulder. "Courage," he said, naming a rune. "And Agility."
The others were discussing the fastest way to get to the convergence, but Julian was aware of both Emma's and Kieran's eyes on him as he put one hand on Mark's back and used the other to draw two careful runes. At the first bite of the stele, Mark tensed, but relaxed immediately, letting out his breath in a soft exhale.
When Julian was done, he lowered his hands. Mark straightened up and turned to him. Though he had shed no tears, his two-colored eyes were brilliant. For a moment there was no one in the world but Julian and his brother.
"Why?" Julian said.
"For Tavvy," Mark said, and suddenly, in the set of his mouth, in the curve of the determined line of his jaw, Julian could see his own self. "And," Mark added, "because I am a Shadowhunter." He looked toward Kieran, who was gazing at them as if the stele had seared his own skin. Love and hate had their own secret languages, Julian thought, and Mark and Kieran were speaking in them now. "Because I am a Shadowhunter," he said again, his eyes full of a private challenge. "Because I am a Shadowhunter."
Kieran pushed himself away from the table almost violently. "I have told you everything I know," he said. "There are no other secrets."
"So I suppose you're leaving," Mark said. "Thank you for your aid, Kieran. If you are returning to the Hunt, tell Gwyn that I will not be coming back. Not ever, no matter what rules they decree. I swear that I--"
"Don't swear it," Kieran said. "You do not know how things will change."
"Enough." Mark began to turn away.
"I have brought my steed with me," said Kieran. He was speaking to Mark, but everyone else was listening. "A faerie steed of the Hunt can take to the air. Roads do not slow our travel. I will ride ahead and delay what is happening at the convergence until the rest of you arrive."
"I'll go with him," Mark said sharply.
Everyone looked at him in surprise. "Um," said Emma. "You can't knife him on the way, Mark. We may need him."
"Pleasant as that sounds, I wasn't planning to," said Mark. "Two warriors are better than one."
"Good thinking," said Cristina. She slid her two butterfly knives into her belt. Emma had finished fastening on the last of her seraph blades.
Julian felt the familiar chill of battle's expectation rising in his veins. "Let's go."
As they headed downstairs, Julian found himself beside Kieran. The hair on the back of his neck prickled. Kieran felt like strangeness, wild magic, the murderous abandonment of the Hunt. He couldn't imagine what Mark had found to love about him.
"Your brother was wrong about you," Kieran said as they
descended the steps to the entryway.
Julian glanced around, but no one seemed to be listening to them. Emma was beside Cristina, the twins were together, and Dru was talking shyly to Diego.
"What do you mean?" he asked guardedly. He had learned well in the past to be wary of the Fair Folk, their verbal entrapments and their false implications.
"He said you were gentle," said Kieran. "The most gentle person he knew." He smiled, and there was a cold beauty to his face when he smiled, like the crystalline surface of frost. "You are not gentle. You have a ruthless heart."
For several long moments Julian was silent, hearing only the sounds of their steps on the stairs. At the last step he turned.
"Remember it," he said, and walked away.
Because I am a Shadowhunter.
Mark stood beside Kieran on the sweep of grass that led down to the bluff and then the sea. The Institute rose behind them, dark and lightless, though from here, at least, the hole in the roof was invisible.
Kieran put his fingers in his mouth and whistled, a sound achingly familiar to Mark. The sight of Kieran was still enough to make his heart ache, from the way he held himself, every line of his body speaking of his early Court training, to the way that his hair had grown too long since Mark had not been there to cut it, and the blue-dark strands fell into his eyes and tangled with his long eyelashes. Mark remembered being enchanted by the curve and sweep of those lashes. He remembered how they felt against his skin.