Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices 2)

"It's been weird ever since we--ever since I started dating Mark," she said, holding his gaze with her own. "But it's not because of Mark. It's because of us. What we did."

"We'll be fine," he said. "There's no rule book for this, no guidance. But we don't want to hurt each other, so we won't."

"There've been parabatai in the past who started hating each other. Think of Lucian Graymark and Valentine Morgenstern."

"That won't happen to us. We chose each other when we were children. We chose each other again when we were fourteen. I chose you, and you chose me. That's what the parabatai ceremony is, really, isn't it? It's a way of sealing that promise. The one that says that I will always choose you."

She leaned against his arm, just the lightest touch of her shoulder against his, but it lit up his body like fireworks over the Santa Monica Pier. "Jules?"

He nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

"I will always choose you, too," she said, and, laying her head on his shoulder, shut her eyes.

*

Cristina woke out of an uneasy sleep with a start. The room was dim; she was curled on the foot of the bed, her legs drawn up under her. Kieran was sleeping a drugged sleep propped against pillows, and Mark was on the floor, tangled in blankets.

Two hours, Nene had said. She had to check on Kieran every two hours. She looked again at Mark, decided she couldn't wake him, sighed, and rose to a sitting position, edging up the bed toward the faerie prince.

Many people looked calm in their sleep, but not Kieran. He was breathing hard, eyes darting back and forth behind his eyelids. His hands moved restlessly over the bedcovers. Still, he did not wake when she leaned forward to push up the back of his shirt with awkward fingers.

His skin was fever-hot. He was achingly lovely so close, though: His long cheekbones matched his long eyes, their thick lashes feathering down, his hair a deep blue-black.

She quickly changed out the poultice; the old one was half-soaked with blood. As she leaned forward to pull his shirt back down, a hand clamped around her wrist like a vise.

Black and silver eyes gazed up at her. His lips moved; they were chapped and dry.

"Water?" he whispered.

Somehow, one-handedly, she managed to pour water from a pitcher on the nightstand into a pewter cup and give it to him. He drank it without letting go of her.

"Maybe you do not remember me," she said. "I am Cristina."

He put the cup down and stared at her. "I know who you are," he said, after a moment. "I thought--but no. We are in the Seelie Court."

"Yes," she said. "Mark is asleep," she added, in case he was worried.

But his mind seemed far away. "I thought I would die this night," he said. "I was prepared for it. I was ready."

"Things do not always happen when we think they will," Cristina said. It didn't seem that convincing a remark to her, but Kieran appeared comforted. Exhaustion was sweeping over his face, like a curtain sliding across a window.

His grip tightened on her. "Stay with me," he said.

Jolted by surprise, she would have replied--perhaps even refused--but she did not get the chance. He was already asleep.

*

Julian lay awake.

He wanted to sleep; exhaustion felt as if it had soaked into his bones. But the room was full of dim light and Emma was maddeningly close to him. He could feel the heat from her body as she slept. She had pushed away part of the bedspread that covered her, and he could see her bare shoulder where the dress she wore had slipped down, and the shape of the parabatai rune on her arm.

He thought of the storm clouds outside the Institute, the way she'd kissed him on the Institute steps before Gwyn had come. No, best to be truthful with himself. Before she'd pulled away and said his brother's name. That had been what ended it.

Perhaps it was just too easy to fall back into inappropriate emotion when they were already so close. Part of him wanted her to forget him and be happy. Part of him wanted her to remember the way he remembered, as if the memory of what they had been like together were a living part of his blood.

He ran his hands restlessly through his hair. The more he tried to bury such thoughts, the more they bubbled up, like water in the rock pool. He wanted to reach down and draw Emma toward him, capture her mouth with his--kiss the real Emma and erase the memory of the leanansidhe--but he would have settled for curling her close against his side, holding her through the night and feeling her body expand and contract as she breathed. He would have settled for sleeping through the night with only their smallest fingers touching.

"Julian," said a soft voice. "Awaken, son of thorns."

He sat up straight. Standing at the foot of the bed was a woman. Not Nene or Cristina: a woman he'd never seen before in person, though she was familiar from pictures. She was thin to the point of gauntness, but still beautiful, with full lips and glass-blue eyes. Red hair rippled to her waist. Her dress looked as if it had been made for her in a time before she had been so starved, but it was still lovely: deep blue and white, patterned with a delicate tracery of feathers, it wrapped her body in a downed softness. Her hands were long and white and pale, her mouth red, her ears slightly pointed.

On her head was a golden circlet--a crown, of intricate faerie-work.

"Julian Blackthorn," said the Queen of the Seelie Court. "Wake now and come with me, for I have something to show you."

14

THROUGH DARKENED GLASS

The Queen was silent as she walked, and Julian, barefoot, hurried to keep up with her. She moved purposefully down the long corridors of the Court.

It was hard to wrap one's mind around the geography of Faerie, with its ever-changing terrain, the way huge spaces fitted inside smaller ones. It was as if someone had taken the philosopher's question of how many angels could fit on the head of a pin and turned it into a landscape.

They passed other members of the gentry as they went. Here in the Seelie Court, there was less dark glamour, less viscera and bone and blood. Green livery echoed the color of plants and trees and grass. Everywhere there was gold: gold doublets on the men, long gold dresses on the women, as if they were channeling the sunshine that couldn't reach them

below the earth.

They turned at last from the corridor into a massive circular room. It was bare of any furniture, and the walls were smooth stone, curving up toward a crystal set into the peak of the roof. Directly below the crystal was a great stone plinth, with a golden bowl resting on top of it.

"This is my scrying glass," said the Queen. "One of the treasures of the fey. Would you look into it?"

Julian hung back. He didn't have Cristina's expertise, but he did know what a scrying glass was. It allowed you to gaze into a reflective surface, usually a mirror or pool of water, and see what was happening somewhere else in the world. He itched to use it to check on his family, but he would take no gifts from a faerie unless he had to.

"No, thank you, my lady," he said.

He saw anger flash in her eyes. It surprised him. He would have thought her better at controlling her emotions. The anger was gone in a moment, though, and she smiled at him.

"A Blackthorn is about to put their own life in grave danger," she said. "Is that not a good enough reason for you to look in the glass? Would you be ignorant of harm coming to your family, your blood?" Her voice was almost a croon. "From what I know of you, Julian, son of thorns, that is not in your nature."

Julian clenched his hands. A Blackthorn putting themselves in danger? Could it be Ty, throwing himself into a mystery, or Livvy, being willful and reckless? Dru? Tavvy?

"You are not easily tempted," she said, and now her voice had grown softer, more seductive. Her eyes gleamed. She liked this, he thought. The chase, the game. "How unusual in one so young."

Julian thought with an almost despairing amusement of his near breakdown just now around Emma. But that was a weakness. Everyone had them. Years of denying himself anything and everything he wanted for the sake of his family had forged his will into something that surprised even him sometimes.

"I can't reach through and change what happens, can I?" he said. "Wouldn't it just be torture for me to watch?"