Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices 1)

They'd carried Emma into her bedroom, and Julian had helped lay her down on the bed while Mark had gone to get Cristina.

Cristina hadn't screamed when he'd awoken her, or even when she'd seen Emma in her torn and blood-soaked clothes. She had gone to work helping them: She'd put Emma into clean, dry clothes, had retrieved bandages for Jules, had washed the blood from Emma's hair.

"She will be all right," Cristina said now. "She will heal."

Mark didn't want to remember the way Emma's skin had opened as the whip had come down, or the sound the whip made. The smell of blood mixing with the salt of the ocean air.

"Mark." Cristina touched his face. He turned his cheek into her palm, involuntarily. She smelled like coffee and bandages. He wondered if Julian had told her everything--of Kieran's suspicions of her, of Mark's inability to protect his brother or Emma.

Her skin was soft against his; her eyes, upturned, were wide and dark. Mark thought of Kieran's eyes, like fragments of the glass inside a kaleidoscope, shattered and polychromatic. Cristina's were steady. Singular.

She brought her hand down the side of his jaw, her expression thoughtful. Mark felt as if his whole body were tightening into a knot.

"Mark?" It was Julian's voice, low, from the other side of the door.

"You should go in to your brother." Cristina lowered her hand, brushing his shoulder once, reassuringly. "This is not your fault," she said. "It is not. You understand?"

Mark nodded, unable to speak.

"I will wake the children and tell them," she said, and set off down the hall, her stride as purposeful as if she were in gear, though she was wearing a T-shirt and pajama bottoms.

Mark took a deep breath and pushed open the door to Emma's bedroom.

Emma lay unmoving, her pale hair spread out over the pillow, her chest rising and falling with steady breaths. They had used sleep runes on her, as well as runes to kill pain, stop blood loss, and heal.

Julian was still sitting beside her. Her hand was limp on the blanket; Julian had moved his own hand close to hers, their fingers interlocking but not touching. His head was turned away from Mark's; Mark could only see the hunched set of his shoulders, the way the vulnerable curve of the nape of his neck looked like the curve of Emma's back as the whip came down.

He seemed very young.

"I tried," Mark said. "I tried to take the lashes. Gwyn wouldn't allow it."

"I know. I saw you try," Julian said in a flat voice. "But Emma's killed faeries. You haven't. They wouldn't have wanted to whip you, once they had the chance to whip her. It didn't matter what you did."

Mark cursed himself silently. He had no idea what the human words were with which he could comfort his brother.

"If she died," Julian went on in the same flat voice, "I would want to die. I know that's not healthy. But it's the truth."

"She won't die," Mark said. "She's going to be fine. She just needs to recover. I have seen what men--what people--look like when they're going to die. There is a look that comes over them. This is not it."

"I can't help wondering," said Julian. "This whole business. Someone's trying to bring back the person they loved, a person who died. It feels almost wrong. As if maybe we should let them."

"Jules," Mark said. He could feel the jagged edges of his little brother's emotions, like the touch of a razor on skin long covered by bandages. This was what it meant to be family, he thought. To hurt when someone else hurt. To want to protect them. "They're taking lives. You can't pay for tragedy with more tragedy, or draw life from death."

"I just know that if it were her, if it were Emma, I would do the same thing." Julian's eyes were haunted. "I would do whatever I had to."

"You wouldn't." Mark put his hand on Julian's shoulder, pulling him around. Julian moved reluctantly to face his brother. "You would do the right thing. All your life, you've done the right thing."

"I'm sorry," Julian said.

"You're sorry? All of this, Jules, the convoy-- If I hadn't told Cristina about Gwyn's cloak--"

"They would have found something else to punish you with," said Julian. "Kieran wanted to hurt you. You hurt him, so he wanted to hurt you. I'm sorry--sorry about Kieran, because I can see you cared about him. I'm sorry I didn't know you'd left anyone you cared about behind. I'm sorry that for years I thought you were the one who had freedom, that you were enjoying yourself in Faerie while I killed myself here trying to raise four kids and run the Institute and keep Arthur's secrets. I wanted to believe you were okay--I wanted to believe one of us was okay. So much."

"You wanted to believe I was happy, just as I wanted to believe the same about you," Mark said. "I had thought about whether you were happy, thriving, living. I had never stopped to wonder what kind of man you might have grown up to be." He paused. "I am proud of you. I have had little hand in the shaping of you, but I am proud nonetheless to call you my brother--to call all of you my brothers and sisters. And I will not leave you again."

Julian's eyes widened, their color Blackthorn bright in the gloom. "You won't go back to Faerie?"

"No matter what happens," Mark said, "I will stay here. I will always, always stay here."

He put his arms around Julian and held him tightly. Julian exhaled, as if he were letting go of something heavy that he had carried for a long time, and leaning on Mark's shoulder, he let his older brother bear just a little of his weight.

Emma dreamed about her parents.

They were in the small white-painted Venice house they had lived in when she was a child. She could see the faint glimmer of the canals from the window. Her mother sat at the kitchen island, a cloth spread out in front of her. On the cloth lay an array of knives, sorted from smallest to largest. The largest was Cortana, and Emma gazed at it hungrily, drinking in the smooth goldness, the sharp glow of the blade.

Compared to the brilliance of the weapon, her mother seemed a shadow. Her hair glowed, and her hands, as she worked, but the edges of her were indistinct, and Emma was terrified that if she reached for her mother she would disappear.

Music rose around them. Emma's father, John, came into the kitchen, his violin tucked against his shoulder. Usually he played with a shoulder rest but not now. The violin poured forth music like water and--

The sharp crack of a whip, pain like fire.

Emma gasped. Her mother lifted her head.

"Is something wrong, Emma?"

"I--no, nothing." She turned toward her father. "Keep playing, D

ad."

Her father gave his gentle smile. "You sure you don't want to try?"

Emma shook her head. Whenever she touched bow to strings, it made the sound of a strangled cat.

"Music is in the blood of the Carstairs," he said. "This violin once belonged to Jem Carstairs."

Jem, Emma thought. Jem, who had helped her through her parabatai ceremony with gentle hands and a thoughtful smile. Jem, who had given her his cat to watch over her.

Pain that went through skin like a blade. Cristina's voice saying, "Emma, oh, Emma, why did they hurt you so much?"

Her mother lifted Cortana. "Emma, I'm sure you're a thousand miles away."

"Maybe not quite that far." Her father lowered his bow.

"Emma." It was Mark's voice. "Emma, come back. For Julian, please. Come back."

"Trust him," said John Carstairs. "He will come to you, and he will need your help. Trust James Carstairs."

"But he said he had to go, Papa." Emma had not called her father Papa since she was very small. "He said there was something he was looking for."

"He is about to find it," said John Carstairs. "And then there will be yet more for you to do."

"Jules, come have something to eat--"

"Not now, Livvy. I need to stay with her."

"But, Papa," Emma whispered. "Papa, you're dead."

John Carstairs smiled sadly. "As long as there is love and memory, there is no true death," he said.

He put bow to strings and began to play again. Music rose up, swirling around the kitchen like smoke.

Emma stood up from the kitchen chair. The sky was darkening outside, the setting sun reflected in the canal water. "I have to go."

"Oh, Em." Her mother came around the kitchen island toward her. She was carrying Cortana. "I know."

Shadows moved across the inside of her mind. Someone was holding her hand so tightly it hurt. "Emma, please," said the voice she loved the most in the world. "Emma, come back."

Emma's mother placed the sword in her hands. "Steel and temper, daughter," she said. "And remember that a blade made by Wayland the Smith can cut anything."

"Go back." Her father kissed her on the forehead. "Go back, Emma, to where you are needed."

"Mama," she whispered. "Papa."

She tightened her grip on the sword. The kitchen whirled away from her, folding up like an envelope. Her mother and father disappeared into it, like words written long ago.