Lady Midnight

The world was extra intense for Ty, Julian had always said. It was as if his ears could hear more clearly, his eyes see more, and sometimes it was too much for him. He needed to cover noise, to feel something in his hand to distract him. He needed to rock back and forth to soothe himself. Everyone processed stress in a different way, Julian said. This was Ty’s, and it hurt nobody.

“Em,” Julian said. His face was taut. “I need to go in alone.”

She nodded. He let go of her almost reluctantly. “Guys,” he said, looking at his siblings—at Dru’s round, worried face, Tavvy’s uncomprehending one, Livvy’s unhappy eyes, and Ty’s hunched shoulders. “It’s going to be hard for Mark. We can’t expect him to be okay all at once. He’s been away a long time. He has to get used to being here.”

“But we’re his family,” said Livvy. “Why would you have to get used to your own family?”

“You might,” Julian said, in that patient soft voice that amazed Emma sometimes, “if you’d been away from them a long time and you’d been somewhere where your mind plays tricks on you.”

“Like Faerie,” said Ty. He had stopped rocking and was leaning back against the wall, dark hair damp and in his face.

“Right,” Julian said. “So we’re going to have to give him time. Maybe leave him alone a little.” He looked over at Emma.

She pasted a smile onto her face—God, she was so much worse at this than Jules—and said, “Malcolm’s working on the investigation. The murders. I thought we could head to the library and look into ley lines.”

“Me too?” Drusilla piped up.

Emma said, “You can help us plot a map. Okay?”

Dru nodded. “Okay.” She rose to her feet and the others followed. As Emma led them away down the hall, a quietly subdued group, she looked back only once. Julian was standing by the door to Mark’s room, watching them go. His eyes met hers for a split second before he looked away, as if he hadn’t seen her glance at all.

If only Emma was with him, Julian thought as he pushed open the door, this would be easier. It would have to be easier. When Emma was with him it was like he was breathing twice as much oxygen, had twice as much blood, had two hearts to drive the motion of his body. He put it down to the doubling magic of parabatai: She made him twice what he would be otherwise.

But he’d had to send her away with the kids; he didn’t trust anyone else with them, and definitely not Arthur. Arthur, he thought bitterly, who was hiding in his attic while one of his nephews desperately tried to hold his family together and another one—

“Mark?” Julian said.

The bedroom was dim, the curtains closed. He could just see that Cristina was sitting on the floor, her back to the wall. She had one hand pressed to the pendant at her throat, and the other at her hip, where something gleamed between her fingers.

Mark was pacing back and forth at the foot of the bed, his hair hanging in his face. You could see how painfully thin he was; there was sinewy muscle on him, but it was the kind you got from starving sometimes and driving yourself anyway. His head jerked up when Julian said his name.

Their eyes met and for a brief moment Julian saw a flicker of recognition in his brother’s eyes.

“Mark,” he said again, and moved forward, his hand out. “It’s me. It’s Jules.”

“Don’t—” Cristina started up, but it was too late. Mark had bared his teeth in an angry hiss.

“Lies,” he snarled. “Hallucinations—I know you—Gwyn sent you to trick me—”

“I’m your brother,” Julian said again. The look on Mark’s face was wild.

“You know the wishes of my heart,” said Mark. “And you turn them against me, like knives.”

Julian looked across the room at Cristina. She was rising to her feet slowly, as if preparing to throw herself between the two brothers if needed.

Mark whirled on Jules. His eyes were blind, unseeing. “You bring the twins in front of me and you kill them over and over. My Ty, he doesn’t understand why I can’t save him. You bring me Dru and when she laughs and asks to see the fairy-tale castle, all ringed round with hedges, you throw her against the thorns until they pierce her small body. And you bid me wash in Octavian’s blood, for the blood of an innocent child is magic under the hill.”

Julian came no closer. He was remembering what Jace Herondale and Clary Fairchild had told him and his sister, their meeting with Mark years ago under the faerie hills, his broken eyes and the whip marks on his body.

Mark was strong, he had told himself in the dead darkness of the thousand nights afterward. He could endure it. Julian had thought about only torture of the body. He had not thought about torture of the mind.

“And Julian,” Mark said. “He is too strong to break. You try to break him on the wheel, and tear him with thorns and blades, but even then he won’t give up. So you bring to him Emma, for the wishes of our hearts are knives to you.”

That was too much for Julian. He lurched forward, grabbing hold of one of the posts of the bed to steady himself.

“Mark,” he said. “Mark Antony Blackthorn. Please. It’s not a dream. You’re really here. You’re home.”

He reached for Mark’s hand. Mark whipped it back, away from him. “You are lying smoke.”