Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices 2)

Uneasiness and exhaustion had driven Mark from the parlor. The others, equally tired, were scattering to their own bedrooms. Cristina had slipped away without Mark noticing--though he had felt her absence, as a sort of pang in his chest, after she was gone. Diana had decided to leave as soon as she could for Idris, and Julian and Emma had gone to see her off.

Mark had been a little shocked by Emma's announcement that the pretense of their relationship was over; he knew what he'd said to her, back in Faerie, and that she'd only done as he asked. Still he felt slightly unmoored, alone, with no idea how to look in Kieran's eyes and tell him untruths.

He didn't like lying; he hadn't done it in the Hunt, and he felt uncomfortable with the rhythms of it. He wanted to talk about it with Cristina, but he couldn't imagine she'd want to hear about his complicated feelings for Kieran. Julian would be focused entirely on what was necessary and had to be done, no matter how painful. And now he could no longer talk to Emma. He hadn't realized how close their relationship, however false, had brought them in actual friendship; he wondered, now, if he would lose that, too.

And as for Kieran--Mark leaned his head against the wall next to Kieran's door. The corridors were papered in dulled gold leaf, trailing vines and trellises, cool against his forehead. Kieran was the person he could talk to least.

Not that banging his head on a wall was going to do any good. He straightened up and pushed the door open quietly; the room they'd set aside for Kieran was far away from the rest of the sleeping quarters, up a small flight of stairs, a room that looked as if it had likely once been used for storage. Narrow, arched windows looked out over the flat walls of other buildings. There was a massive four-poster bed in the middle of the room and an enormous wardrobe--though what they thought Kieran could possibly put in it, Mark had no idea.

The coverlet had been pulled off the bed and Kieran was nowhere to be seen. Mark felt a lurch of unease. Kieran had promised Cristina he would stay, in his own way: If he had decided not to honor his pledge to Cristina, there would be trouble.

Mark sighed, and closed his eyes. He felt stupid and vulnerable, standing in the middle of the room with his eyes shut, but he knew Kieran. "Kier," he said. "I can't see anything. Come out and talk to me."

A moment later there were fierce hands on his sides, lifting him, tossing him back on the bed. Kieran's weight pushed Mark down into the mattress; Mark opened his eyes and saw Kieran propped over him, savage and strange in his gentry clothes. The outline of Kieran's bandages pressed against Mark's chest, but otherwise Kieran's weight was a familiar one. To his body, a welcome one.

Kieran was looking down at him, silver and black eyes like the night sky. "I love you," Kieran said. "And I have made promises. But if I am to be constantly shamed and sent away, I will not answer for my actions."

Mark smoothed back a lock of Kieran's hair. The strands slipped through his fingers, heavy silk. "I'll make sure they treat you with more respect. They just have to get used to you."

Kieran's eyes glittered. "I have done nothing to earn their distrust."

Oh, but you have, Mark thought, you have, and everyone remembers it but you.

"They helped me rescue you," he said instead. "Don't be ungrateful."

Kieran smiled at that. "I would rather imagine it was only you responsible." He bent down to nuzzle Mark's throat.

Mark half-closed his eyes; he could feel his own lashes tickle his cheeks. He could feel the shift of the weight of Kieran on top of him. Kieran smelled like ocean, as he usually did. Mark remembered a hill in a green country, a damp cairn of stones, tumbling with Kieran to the bottom of it. Hands in his hair and on his body when he hadn't been touched in so long. He had burned and shivered. He shivered now. What was Kieran to him? What was he to Kieran? What had they ever been to each other?

"Kier," Mark said. "Listen--"

"Now is not the time for talking," said Kieran, and his lips were featherlight on Mark's skin, moving along the pulse of his throat, along his jaw, to capture his mouth.

It was a moment that felt stretched out to forever, a moment in which Mark fell through stars that shattered all around him. Kieran's lips were soft and cool and tasted like rain, and Mark clung to him in the dark and broken place at the bottom of the sky.

He tangled his fingers in Kieran's hair, curled his fingertips in, heard Kieran exhale harshly against his mouth. His body pressed harder against Mark's, and then Kieran's fingers slid against the back of Mark's neck and knotted in the chain that held his elf-bolt necklace.

It was like being shaken awake. Mark rolled over, taking Kieran with him, so they were lying side by side on the bed. The movement broke the kiss, and Kieran stared at him, half-annoyed and half-dazed. "Miach," he said. His voice took the word and turned it into a beckoning caress, an invitation to faerie pleasures unimaginable.

"No," said Mark. "Don't call me that."

Kieran inhaled. "There is something wrong between us, is there not? Mark, please tell me what it is. I sense the distance but do not understand its cause."

"You don't remember, but we had an argument. About me staying with my family. It's why I gave you my elf-bolt necklace back."

Kieran looked bewildered. "But I always knew you might stay with your family. I did not want it, but I must have come to accept it. I remember waking in the Unseelie Court. I do not remember feeling any anger toward you."

"It wasn't a bad fight." Mark swallowed. "But I wasn't expecting this--you, in my world. All the complications of these politics."

"You don't want me here?" Kieran's face didn't change, but his hair was suddenly streaked with white where it curled against his temples.

"It's not that," Mark said. "In the Wild Hunt, I thought I might die any night. Every night. I wanted everything, always, and risked anything, because no one depended on me. And then there was you, and we depended on each other, but . . ." He thought of Cristina. Her words came to him, and he couldn't help using them, though it almost felt like a betrayal. Cristina, who he had kissed with joyous abandon for those few moments near the revel, before he had realized what she thought of him . . . someone she would only kiss when drunk or out of her mind . . .

"I have always needed you, Kieran," he said. "I have needed you to live. I've always needed you so much, I never had a chance to think about whether we were good for each other or not."

Kieran sat up. He was silent, though Mark saw--to his relief--that the white streaks in his hair had gone back to their more normal blue-black color. "That is honest," he said finally. "I cannot fault you there."

"Kieran--"

"How much time do you need?" Kieran had drawn himself up, and he was all proud prince of Faerie now. Mark thought of the times he'd seen Kieran at revels, at a distance; seen the smaller faeries scatter in front of him. Girls and boys who hung on his arms, hoping for a word or look, because the favor of even a disgraced prince was currency. And Kieran, granting neither those words nor those looks, because his words and looks were all for Mark. All for what they had between them when the Wild Hunt was looking away . . .

"Maybe a few days," Mark said. "If you can be patient for that long."

"I can be patient for a few days."

"Why did you choose Cristina?" Mark said abruptly. "When you had to swear fealty to one of us. Why her? Did you do it to unsettle me?"

Kieran grinned. "Not everything is, as they say, about you, Mark." He leaned back; his hair was very black against the stark white linens. "Shouldn't you be going?"

"Don't you want me to stay here?" Mark said. "With you?"

"While you weigh my merits as if I were a horse you were considering buying? No," Kieran said. "Go back to your own room, Mark Blackthorn. And if loneliness keeps you from your rest, do not seek me out. Surely there must be a rune for sleeplessness."

There wasn't, but Mark didn't feel like it would be a good idea to say so. Kieran's eyes were glittering dangerously. Mark left, wondering if he'd made a horrible mistake.

&n

bsp; *

Cristina's room in the London Institute was much like the rooms she'd seen in pictures of other Institutes all over the world: plainly furnished with a heavy bed, wardrobe, dresser, and desk. A small bathroom, clean, with a shower that she'd already used. Now she lay on the lumpy mattress, the blankets pulled up to her chest, her arm aching.

She wasn't sure why. She'd loved every moment of flying with the Wild Hunt; if she'd injured herself somehow, she had no memory of it. Not when she'd mounted the horse, or when they'd ridden, and surely she'd recall pain like that? And how could she have hurt herself any other way?

She rolled to the side and reached to touch her witchlight, on the nightstand table. It flared to a soft glow, illuminating the room--the enormous English bed, the heavy oak furniture. Someone had scrawled the initials JB+LH into the paint by the window.

She stared down at her right arm. Around her wrist was a band of paler skin, slightly reddened at the edges, like the scar left by a fiery bracelet.

*

"You'll be all right?" Diana said. It was half declaration, half question.

Diana, Julian, and Emma stood in the entryway of the London Institute. The Institute doors were open and the dark courtyard was visible; it had rained earlier, and the flagstones were washed clean. Julian could see the arch of the famous metal gate that closed off the Institute, and the words worked into it: WE ARE DUST AND SHADOWS.

"We'll be fine," Julian said.

"Malcolm's dead, again. No one's trying to kill us," said Emma. "It's practically a vacation."

Diana hoisted her bag higher on her shoulder. Her plan was to take a taxi to Westminster Abbey, where a secret tunnel accessible only to Shadowhunters led to Idris.

"I don't like leaving you."

Julian was surprised. Diana had always come and gone according to her own lights. "We'll be fine," he said. "Evelyn's here, and the Clave is a phone call away."

"Not a phone call you want to make," said Diana. "I sent another message to Magnus and Alec, and I'll keep in touch with them from Alicante." She paused. "If you need them, send a fire-message and they'll come."

"I can handle this," Julian said. "I've handled a lot worse for a lot longer."

Diana's eyes met his. "I would step in, if I could," she said. "You know that. I'd take the Institute if it was possible. Put myself up against the Dearborns."

"I know," Julian said, and oddly enough, he did. Even if he didn't know what prevented Diana from putting herself forward as a candidate, he knew it was something important.

"If it would make any difference," Diana said. "But I wouldn't even get through the interview. It would be futile, and then I wouldn't be able to stay with you, or help you."