“That’s a glamour,” Julian said. “I know what’s underneath.”
She rested her chin on her hand. “Most people would not dare to speak that way to the Seelie Queen.”
“Most people don’t have something the Seelie Queen wants,” said Julian. He felt nothing, looking at her: She was beautiful, but he could not have desired her less if she’d been a beautiful rock or a beautiful sunset.
She narrowed her eyes and they flickered back to blue. “You are indeed different,” she said, “more like a faerie.”
“I’m better,” he said.
“Really?” The Queen sat up slowly, her silken dress resettling around her. “There is a saying among my people, about the mortals we bring here: In the Land of Faerie, as mortals feel no sorrow, neither can they feel joy.”
“And why is that?” asked Julian.
She laughed. “Have you ever wondered how we lure mortals to live amongst faeries and serve us, son of thorns? We choose those who have lost something and promise them that which humans desire most of all, a cessation to their grief and suffering. Little do they know that once they enter our Lands, they are in the cage and will never again feel happiness.” She leaned forward. “You are in that cage, boy.”
A shiver went up Julian’s spine. It was atavistic, primal, like the impulse that had driven him to climb Livvy’s pyre. “You’re trying to distract me, my lady. How about giving me what you promised?”
“What do you mind about the parabatai bond now? It seems you no longer care for Emma. I saw it in the way she looked at you. As if she missed you though you were standing beside her.”
“The bonds,” Julian said through his teeth. “How can they be broken?” His head throbbed. Maybe he was dehydrated.
“Very well.” The Queen leaned back, letting her long hair spill over the side of the chaise and down to the ground. “Though it may not please you.”
“Tell me.”
“The parabatai rune has a weakness that no other rune has, because it was created by Jonathan Shadowhunter, rather than the Angel Raziel,” said the Queen. As she spoke she drew on the air with her fingertip, in lazy spirals. “Kept in the Silent City is the original parabatai rune inscribed by Jonathan Shadowhunter and David the Silent. If it is destroyed, all the parabatai runes in the world will be broken.”
Julian could hardly breathe. His heart was hammering against his chest. All the bonds in the world. Broken. He still couldn’t explain what he was feeling, but the intensity of it made him feel as if he were bursting out of his own skin. “Why would I not be pleased to hear that?” he asked. “Because it would be difficult?”
“Not difficult. Impossible. Oh, it wasn’t always impossible,” said the Queen, sitting up and smirking at him. “When I spoke to you about it first, it was in good faith. But things have changed.”
“What do you mean?” Julian demanded. “How have things changed?”
“I mean there is only one way to destroy the rune,” the Queen said. “It must be cut through and through by the Mortal Sword.”
11
SOME FAR-OFF HAPPIER SEA
The wound was long but not deep, a slice across Kieran’s right upper arm. Kieran sat with his teeth gritted atop the bed in one of the Institute’s empty guest rooms, his sleeve cut away by Cristina’s balisong. Mark leaned nervously against a nearby wall, watching.
Cristina had been a little surprised at how muscular Kieran’s arm was; even after he’d carried her through London, she’d thought of faeries as delicate, fine-boned. And he was, but there was toughness there too. His muscles seemed more tightly wrapped against his bones than a human’s, giving his body a lean, tensile strength.
She finished carefully mopping the blood away from the cut and ran her fingers lightly over the skin around it. Kieran shivered, half-closing his eyes. She felt guilty for causing him pain. “I see no sign of infection or need for the wound to be stitched,” she said. “Bandaging it should do the trick.”
Kieran looked at her sideways. It was hard to discern his expression in the shadows: There was only one lamp in the room, and it was heavily shaded.
“I’m sorry to have brought this trouble to you,” Kieran said in a soft voice. A nighttime voice, careful of waking those who might be sleeping. “Both of you.”
“You didn’t bring us trouble,” said Mark, his voice roughened with tiredness. “You brought us information that can help us save the lives of people we love. We’re grateful.”
Kieran frowned, as if he weren’t too fond of the word “grateful.” Before Cristina could add anything, a cry split the night—a howl of miserable terror.
Even knowing what it was, Cristina shivered. “Tavvy,” she said.
“He’s having a nightmare,” Mark confirmed.
“Poor child,” said Kieran. “The terrors of the night are grim indeed.”
“He’ll be all right,” Mark said, though worry shadowed his expression. “He wasn’t there when Livvy died, thank the Angel, but I think he heard whispers. Perhaps we shouldn’t have brought him to the funeral. To see the pyres—”
“I believe such things are a comfort,” Cristina said. “I believe they allow our souls to say good-bye.”
The door creaked open—someone ought to see to the hinges—and Helen stuck her head in, looking distressed. “Mark, will you go to Tavvy?”
Mark hesitated. “Helen, I shouldn’t—”
“Please.” Helen leaned exhaustedly against the doorjamb. “He’s not used to me yet and he won’t stop crying.”
“I’ll take care of Kieran,” Cristina said, with more confidence than she felt.
Mark followed Helen from the room with clear reluctance. Feeling awkward at being left alone with Kieran, Cristina took a bandage from the kit and began to wind it around his upper arm. “I always to seem to end up tending your wounds,” she said half-jokingly.
But Kieran did not smile. “That must be why,” he said, “whenever I suffer, I now long for the touch of your hands.”
Cristina looked at him in surprise. He was clearly more delirious than she had thought. She laid a hand on his forehead: He was burning up. She wondered what a normal temperature for faeries was.
“Lie down.” She tied off the bandage. “You should rest.”
Her hair swung forward as she bent over him. He reached up and tucked a lock behind her ear. She went still, her heart thudding. “I thought of you at the Scholomance,” he said. “I thought of you every time anyone used Diego’s name, Rosales. I could not stop thinking of you.”
“Did you want to?” Her voice shook. “Stop thinking of me?”
He touched her hair again, his fingers light where they brushed her cheek. The sensation made goose bumps flood across her skin. “I know that you and Mark are together. I do not know where I fit into all of that.” His cheeks were fever flushed. “I know how much I have hurt you both. I feel it, down in my bones. I would never want to hurt either of you a second time. Tomorrow I will leave here, and neither of you need ever see me again.”
“No!” Cristina exclaimed, with a force that surprised her. “Do not go, not alone.”
“Cristina.” His right hand came up to curve around her other cheek; he was cupping her face. His skin was hot; she could see the blotches of fever on his cheeks, his collarbone. “Princess. You will be better off without me.”
“I am not a princess,” she said; she was leaning over him, one of her hands braced against the blanket. His face was close to hers, so close she could see the dark fringe of his eyelashes. “And I do not want you to go.”
He sat up, his hands still cradling her face. She gave a little gasp and felt her own temperature spike at the warmth of his hands as they moved from her face to her shoulders, to the curve of her waist, drawing her toward him. She let herself fall atop him, her body stretched along his, their hips and chests aligned. He was tense as a drawn bow, tight and arched beneath her. His hands were fever hot, carding through her soft hair.
S
he placed her palms against his hard chest. It rose and fell rapidly. Her mind was spinning. She wanted to press her lips against the fine skin over his cheekbone, graze his jaw with kisses. She wanted, and the wanting shocked her, the intensity of it.