Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices 2)

"The Cohort has the upper hand, though," said Livvy. "She knows about Arthur, and we can't afford to have anyone find out. She's right: They'll hand the Institute over to someone else."

"Is there anything you know about the Dearborns, or the Cohort? Something that might discredit them?" said Kit. "Keep them from getting the Institute if it was up for grabs?"

"But we'd still lose the Institute," said Ty.

"Yeah," said Kit. "But they wouldn't be able to start registering Downworlders. Maybe it doesn't sound that harmful, but it never stops there. Zara clearly doesn't care if Downworlders live or die--once she knows where they all are, once they have to report to her, the Cohort has power over them." He sighed. "You should really read some mundane history books."

"Maybe we could threaten her by saying we'll tell Diego," said Livvy. "He doesn't know, and--I know he was a jerk to Cristina, but I can't believe he'd be okay with all this. If he knew, he'd dump Zara, and she doesn't want that."

Diana frowned. "It's not our strongest position, but it is something." She turned to her desk, picked up a pen and notepad. "I'm going to write to Alec and Magnus. They head up the Downworlder-Shadowhunter Alliance. If anyone knows about the Cohort, or any tricks we can use to defeat them, they will."

"And if they don't?"

"We try Diego," said Diana. "I wish I believed I could trust him more than I do, but--" She sighed. "I like him. But I liked Manuel, too. People are not what they seem."

"And do we keep telling everyone that Julian and the others went to the Academy?" Livvy asked, sliding off the desk. Her eyes were dark-rimmed with exhaustion. Ty's shoulders drooped. Kit felt a little as if he'd been hit with a sandbag himself. "If anyone finds out they went to Faerie, it won't matter what we do about Zara--we'll lose the Institute anyway."

"We hope they come back soon," Diana said, looking out at the moon's reflection on the ocean water. "And if hoping doesn't work, we pray for it."

*

The woods had gone, and as the twilight deepened into true night, the four Shadowhunters trekked through a spectral land of green fields, separated by low stone walls. Every once in a while they would see another patch of the strange blighted earth through the mist. Sometimes they would glimpse the shape of a town in the distance and fall silent, not wanting to attract attention.

They had eaten what was left of their food back on the hill, though it wasn't much. Emma wasn't hungry, though. A snarl of misery had taken up residence in her stomach.

She couldn't forget what she'd seen when she'd woken up, alone in the grass.

Rising, she had looked around for Julian. He was gone, even the impression in the grass where he'd lain beside her fading.

The air had been heavy and gray-gold, making her head buzz as she climbed up over the ridge, about to call Julian's name.

Then she'd seen him, standing halfway down the hill, the dank air lifting his sleeves, the edges of his hair. He wasn't alone. A faerie girl in a black, ragged shift was with him. Her hair was the color of burnt rose petals, a sort of gray-pink, drifting around her shoulders.

Emma thought the girl looked up at her for a moment and smiled. She might have imagined it, though. She knew she didn't imagine what happened next, when the faerie girl leaned in to Jules and kissed him.

She wasn't sure what she thought would happen; some part of her expected Jules to push the girl away. He didn't. Instead he put his arms around her and drew her in, his hand tangling in her shimmering hair. Emma's stomach turned itself inside out as he pressed her close. He held the faerie girl tightly, their mouths moving together, her hands sliding from his shoulders down his back.

There was something almost beautiful about the sight, in a horrible way. It stabbed Emma through with the remembrance of what it had been like to kiss Jules herself. And there was no hesitancy in him, no reluctance, nothing held back as if he were reserving any piece of himself for Emma. He gave himself up utterly to the kiss, and he was as beautiful doing it as the realization that she had really lost him now was awful.

She thought she could actually feel her heart break, like a friable piece of china.

The faerie girl had broken away, and then there had been Mark and Cristina there, and Emma hadn't been able to watch what was happening: She'd turned away, crumpling into the grass, trying not to throw up.

Her hands balled into fists against the ground. Get up, she told herself fiercely. She owed that much to Jules. He'd hidden whatever pain he'd felt when she'd ended things between them, and she owed it to him to do the same.

Somehow she'd managed to get to her feet, plaster a smile on her face, speak normally when she came down the hill to join the others. Nod as they sat and divided up food, as the stars came out and Mark determined that he could navigate by them. Seem unconcerned as they set off, Julian beside his brother, and she and Cristina behind them, following Mark down the winding, unmarked paths of Faerie.

The sky was radiant now with multicolored stars, each blazing an individual path of pigment across the sky. Cristina was uncharacteristically quiet, kicking at stones with the toe of her boot as she walked. Mark and Julian were up ahead of them, just far enough to be out of earshot.

"?Que onda?" Cristina asked, looking sideways at Emma.

Emma's Spanish was bad, but even she understood what's going on? "Nothing." She felt awful about lying to Cristina, but worse about her own feelings. Sharing them would only make them seem more real.

"Well, good," Cristina said. "Because I have something to tell you." She took a deep breath. "I kissed Mark."

"Whoa," said Emma, diverted. "Whoa ho ho."

"Did you just say 'whoa ho ho'?"

"I did," Emma admitted. "So is this like a high-five-slash-chest-bump situation or an oh-my-God-what-are-we-going-to-do situation?"

Cristina tugged nervously on her hair. "I don't know--I like him very much, but--at first I thought I was only kissing him because of the faerie drink--"

Emma gasped. "You drank faerie wine? Cristina! That's how you black out and wake up the next day under a bridge with a tattoo that says I LOVE HELICOPTERS."

"It wasn't really wine! It was just juice!"

"Okay, okay." Emma lowered her voice. "Do you want me to end things with Mark? I mean, you know, tell the family it's over?"

"But Julian," Cristina said, looking troubled. "What about him?"

For a moment, Emma couldn't speak--she was remembering Julian as the pretty faerie girl had come through the grass toward him, the way she had put her hands on his body, the way his arms had locked across her back.

She had never felt jealousy like that before. It still ached in her, like the scar of an old wound. She welcomed the pain in a strange way. It was pain she deserved, she thought. If Julian hurt, she should hurt too, and she had cut him free--he was free to kiss faerie girls and look for love and be happy. He was doing nothing wrong.

She remembered what Tessa had told her, that the way to make Julian stop loving her was to make him think she didn't love him. To convince him. It seemed she had.

"I think my whole charade with Mark has done what it needed to do," she said. "So if you want . . ."

"I don't know," Cristina said. She took a deep breath. "I have to tell you something. Mark and I argued, and I didn't mean to, but I--"

"Stop!" It was Mark, up ahead. He whirled, Julian beside him, and held out a hand toward them. "Do you hear that?"

Emma strained her ears. She wished it was possible to rune herself--she missed the runes that improved speed and hearing and reflex.

She shook her head. Mark had changed into what must have been his Hunt clothes, darker and more ragged, and had even rubbed dirt into his hair and face. His two-colored eyes glittered in the twilight.

"Listen," he said, "it's getting louder," and suddenly Emma could hear it: music. A sort of music she'd never heard before, eerie and tuneless, it made her nerves feel like they were wriggling under her skin.

"The Court is near," Mark said

. "Those are the King's pipers." He plunged into the thicker woods alongside the path, turning only to call "Come along!" to the others.

They followed. Emma was conscious of Julian just ahead of her; he'd taken out a shortsword and was using it to hack away undergrowth. Piles of leaves and branches studded with small, blood-colored flowers tumbled at her feet.

The music was louder now, and grew louder still as they passed through thick forest, the trees above them glimmering with will-o'-the-wisp lights. Multicolored lanterns hung from the branches, pointing the way toward the darkest part of the forest.