Lady Midnight

“I’m your brother.”

“I have no brothers and sisters, no family. I am alone. I ride with the Wild Hunt. I am loyal to Gwyn the Hunter.” Mark recited the words as if by rote.

“I’m not Gwyn,” said Julian. “I’m a Blackthorn. I have Blackthorn blood in me, just like you.”

“You are a phantom and a shadow. You are the cruelty of hope.” Mark turned his face away. “Why do you punish me? I have done nothing to displease the Hunt.”

“There’s no punishment here.” Julian took a step closer to Mark. Mark didn’t move, but his body trembled. “This is home. I can prove it to you.”

He glanced back over his shoulder. Cristina was standing very still against the wall, and he could see that the gleam in her hand was a knife. Clearly she was waiting to see if Mark would attack him. Julian wondered why she had been willing to stay in the room with Mark alone; hadn’t she been afraid?

“There is no proof,” Mark whispered. “Not when you can weave any illusion before my eyes.”

“I’m your brother,” Julian repeated. “And to prove it to you, I’ll tell you something only your brother would know.”

At that Mark raised his eyes. Something flickered in them, like a light shining on distant water.

“I remember the day you were taken,” Julian said.

Mark recoiled. “Any of the Folk would know about that—”

“We were up in the training room. We heard noises, and you went downstairs. But before you went you said something to me. Do you remember?”

Mark stood very still.

“You said, ‘Stay with Emma,’” Julian said. “You said to stay with her, and I have. We’re parabatai now. I’ve looked after her for years and I always will, because you asked me to, because it was the last thing you ever said to me, because—”

He remembered, then, that Cristina was there, and cut himself off abruptly. Mark was staring at him, silent. Julian felt despair well up inside him. Maybe this was a trick of the faeries; maybe they had given Mark back, but so broken and hollowed out that he wasn’t Mark anymore. Maybe—

Mark nearly fell forward, and threw his arms around Julian.

Julian barely managed to catch himself before almost falling over. Mark was whipcord thin, but strong, his hands fisting in Julian’s shirt. Julian could feel Mark’s heart hammering, feel the sharp bones under his skin. He smelled like earth and mildew and grass and nighttime air.

“Julian,” Mark said, muffled, his body shaking. “Julian, my brother, my brother.”

Somewhere in the distance, Julian heard the click of the bedroom door as it shut; Cristina had left them alone together.

Julian sighed. He wanted to relax into his older brother, let Mark hold him up the way he once had. But Mark was slighter than he was, fragile under his hands. He would be holding Mark up from now on. It was not what he had imagined, dreamed of, but it was the reality. It was his brother. He tightened his hands on Mark and adjusted his heart to bear the new burden.

The library in the Los Angeles Institute was small—nothing like the famous libraries of New York and London, but well-known regardless for its surprisingly large collection of books in Greek and Latin. They had more books on the magic and occultism of the classical period than the Institute in Vatican City.

Once the library had been terra-cotta tile and Mission windows; now it was a starkly modern room. The old library had been destroyed in Sebastian Morgenstern’s attack on the Institute, the books scattered among bricks and desert. Rebuilt, it was glass and steel. The floor was polished mountain ash, smooth and shining with applications of protective spells.

A spiral ramp began at the north side of the first floor and climbed the walls; the outer side of the ramp was lined with books and windows, while the inner, facing the library’s interior, was a shoulder-high railing. At the very top was an oculus—a skylight held closed with a large copper lock, made of foot-thick glass decorated all over with protective runes.

Maps were kept in a massive chest decorated with the crest of the Blackthorn family—a ring of thorns—with their family motto beneath it: Lex malla, lex nulla.

A bad law is no law.

Emma suspected that the Blackthorns hadn’t exactly always gotten along with the Council.

Drusilla was rummaging around in the map chest. Livvy and Ty were at the table with more maps, and Tavvy was playing under it with a set of plastic soldiers.

“Can you tell if Julian’s all right?” Livvy asked, propping her chin on her hand to look at Emma anxiously. “You know, how he’s feeling . . .”

Emma shook her head. “Parabatai stuff isn’t really like that. I mean, I can feel if he’s hurt, physically, but not his emotions so much.”

Livvy sighed. “It would be so great to have a parabatai.”

“I don’t really see why,” Ty said.

“Someone who always has your back,” said Livvy. “Someone who will always protect you.”

“I would do that for you anyway,” Ty said, pulling a map toward himself. This was an argument they’d had before; Emma had heard some variation of it half a dozen times.

“Not everyone’s cut out to have one,” she said. She wished for a moment that she had the words to explain it properly: how loving someone more than you loved yourself gave you strength and courage; how seeing yourself in your parabatai’s eyes meant seeing the best version of yourself; how, at its best, fighting alongside your parabatai was like playing instruments in harmony with one another, each piece of the music improving the other.