Queen of Air and Darkness (The Dark Artifices 3)

“Do you feel any better, Kieran?” he said softly.

“Yes—Cristina is a very good nurse.”

Cristina rolled her eyes. “I put on a bandage. Don’t exaggerate my talents.”

Kieran gazed sadly down at his bandaged arm. “I do feel a bit odd with my sleeve missing.”

Mark couldn’t help smiling. “It’s very stylish. Big with mundanes, the one-sleeve look.”

Kieran’s eyes widened. “Is it?”

Both Mark and Cristina giggled. Kieran frowned. “You should not mock me.”

“Everyone gets mocked,” Cristina said teasingly. “That’s what friends do.”

Kieran’s face lit up at that, so much so that Mark felt the painful urge to hug him. Princes of Faerie didn’t have friends, he guessed; he and Kieran had never really talked about it. There was a time that the two of them had been friends, but love and pain had transmuted that in a way Mark now knew wasn’t inevitable. There were people who fell in love but stayed friends—Magnus and Alec, or Clary and Jace, or Helen and Aline.

Kieran’s smile had vanished. He moved restlessly under the covers. “There is something I need to tell you both. To explain.”

Cristina looked worried. “Not if you don’t want to—”

“It is about the Scholomance,” Kieran said, and they both fell silent. They listened while Kieran told them of the Hollow Place. Mark tended to lose himself in other people’s stories. He had always been like that, since he was a child, and he remembered how much he had loved Kieran telling him stories when they were in the Hunt—how he had gone to sleep with Kieran’s fingers in his hair and Kieran’s voice in his ears, telling him tales of Bloduwedd, the princess made of flowers, and of the black cauldron that raised the dead, and of the battle between Gwyn ap Nudd and Herne the Hunter, that had shaken down the trees.

Cristina never lost herself in retellings in the same way, Mark thought; she was entirely present, her expression darkening and her eyes widening with horror as Kieran told them of the Cohort, the fight by the pool, the way Diego had saved him, and how he had escaped from the library.

“They are horrible,” Cristina said, almost before Kieran had finished speaking. “Horrible. That they would go that far—!”

“We must check in on Diego and the others,” said Mark, though Diego Rocio Rosales was one of his least favorite people. “See if they’re all right.”

“I will write to Diego,” Cristina said. “Kieran, I am so sorry. I thought you would be safe at the Scholomance.”

“You could not have known,” said Kieran. “While I was at the Scholomance, I chided Diego for not planning for the future, but this is not a future anyone could imagine.”

“Kieran’s right. It’s not your fault,” said Mark. “The Cohort is out of control. I’d guess it was one of them who followed Emma and Julian into Faerie.”

Kieran shoved his blankets off with a harsh, sudden gesture. “I owe it to Emma and Julian to go after them. I understand that now. I regretted what I had done even before the water of the pool touched me. But I was never able to testify. I was never able to earn their forgiveness or make up for what I did.”

“Emma has forgiven you,” Cristina said.

Kieran did not look convinced. When he spoke, it was haltingly. “I want to show you something.”

When neither Mark nor Cristina moved, he turned around, kneeling on the bed, and pulled up his shirt, baring his back. Mark heard Cristina suck in her breath as Kieran’s skin was revealed.

It was covered in whip marks. They looked newly healed, as if a few weeks old, no longer bleeding but still scarlet. Mark dry-swallowed. He knew every mark and scar on Kieran’s skin. These were new.

“The Cohort whipped you?” he whispered.

“No,” said Kieran. He let his shirt fall, though he didn’t move from where he was, facing the wall behind the bed. “These marks appeared on my back when the water of the pool touched me. They are Emma’s. I bear them now as a reminder of the agony she would not have been caused if not for me. When the pool water touched me, I felt her fear and pain. How can she forgive me for that?”

Cristina rose to her feet. Her brown eyes glimmered with distress; she touched her hand lightly to Kieran’s back. “Kieran,” she said. “As we all have an infinite capacity to make mistakes, we all have an infinite capacity for forgiveness. Emma bears these scars cheerfully because to her, they are a mark of valor. Let them be the same to you. You are a prince of Faerie. I have seen you be as brave as anyone I have known. Sometimes the bravest thing we can do is confront our own failings.”

“You are a prince of Faerie.” Kieran smiled a little, though it was crooked. “Someone else said that to me tonight.”

“To realize that you have made mistakes and hope to correct them is all anyone can hope to do,” said Mark. “Sometimes we may have the best intentions—you were trying to save my life when you went to Gwyn and Iarlath—and the results are terrible. We all had the best intentions when we went to the Council meeting, and now Livvy is dead and Alicante is in the hands of the Cohort.”

Wincing, Kieran turned to face them both. “I swear to you,” he said. “I will fight to my last breath to help you save the ones you love.”

Cristina smiled, clearly touched. “Let’s just focus on Emma and Julian right now,” she said. “We will be grateful to have you with us in Faerie tomorrow.”

Mark reached behind his neck and untied his elf-bolt necklace. “I want you to wear this, Kieran. You must never be defenseless again.”

Kieran didn’t reach for the elf-bolt. “I gave it to you because I wished you to have it.”

“And now I want you to have it,” said Mark. “There are many who seek to harm you, here and in Faerie. I want to be certain you will always have a weapon close to hand.”

Kieran slowly reached out and caught the necklace from Mark’s hand. “I will wear it then, if it pleases you.”

Cristina gave Mark an unreadable look as Kieran looped the necklace over his head. There was something approving in her expression, as though she were glad of Mark’s generosity.

Kieran ran his hands through his hair. It slipped through his fingers in ink-blue locks. “Exhaustion claims me,” he said. “I am sorry.”

In the Hunt, Mark would have wrapped his arms around Kieran and held him. They would have been cushions for each other’s bodies against the hard ground. “Would you like us to make you a bed of blankets on the floor?” Mark offered.

Kieran looked up, his eyes like shining polished mirrors: one black, one silver. “I think I could sleep in the bed if you stayed with me.”

Cristina turned bright red. “All right,” she said. “I’ll say good night then—”

“No,” Kieran said quickly. “I mean both of you. I want both of you to stay with me.”

Mark and Cristina exchanged a look. It was the first time, Mark thought, that he had really looked at Cristina since they’d come back from the Vasquez Rocks: He’d felt too awkward, too ashamed of his own confusion. Now he realized she looked just as flushed and puzzled as he did.

Kieran’s shoulders sagged slightly. “If you do not want to, I will understand.”

It was Cristina who kicked off her shoes and climbed into the bed beside Kieran. She was still wearing her jeans and tank top, one strap torn by a Harpyia demon. Mark got into the bed on the other side of Kieran, pillowing his head on his hand.

They lay there for long moments in silence. The warmth from Kieran’s body was familiar—so familiar it was hard not to curl up against him. To pull the blankets up over them, to forget everything in the darkness.

But Cristina was there, and her presence seemed to change the makeup of the atoms in the air, the chemical balance between Kieran and Mark. It was no longer possible to fall into forgetting. This moment was now, and Mark was sharply aware of Kieran’s nearness in a way he had not been since they first met, as if the clock had been rewound on their relationship.

And he wa

s aware of Cristina as well, no less sharply. Awkward, shy wanting anchored him in place. He glanced over at her; he could see the gleam of her dark hair against the pillow, one bare brown shoulder. Heat muddled Mark’s head, his thoughts.

“I shall dream of the Borderlands,” said Kieran. “Adaon had a cottage there, in lands neither Seelie nor Unseelie. A little stone place, with roses climbing the walls. In the Hunt, when I was hungry and cold, I would say to myself, none of this is real, and try to make the cottage real in my mind. I would pretend I was there, looking out the windows, and not where I truly was. It became more real to me than reality was.”

Cristina touched his cheek lightly. “Ya duérmete,” she murmured. “Go to sleep, you silly person.”

Mark couldn’t help smiling. “Has anyone else ever called you a silly person before, Prince Kieran?” he whispered as Cristina closed her eyes to sleep.

But Kieran was looking over at Cristina, his dark hair tangled, his eyes soft with weariness and something else.