Lord of Shadows

*

The roof of the Institute was shingle, stretching out wide and flat to a waist-high wrought-iron railing. The finials of the railings were tipped with iron lilies. In the distance, Kit could see the glimmering dome of St. Paul’s, familiar from a thousand movies and TV shows.

The clouds were heavy, iron-colored, surrounding the top of the Institute like clouds around a mountain. Kit could barely see down to the streets below. The air was acrid with summer thunder.

They had all spilled up onto the roof, everyone but Evelyn and Bridget. Diana was here, her arm carefully cradled. Ty’s gray eyes were fixed on the sky.

“There,” Dru said, pointing. “Do you see?”

As Kit stared, the glamour peeled away. Suddenly it was as if a painting or a movie had come to life. Only movies didn’t give you this, this visceral tangle of wonder and fear. Movies didn’t give you the smell of magic in the air, crackling like lightning, or the shadows cast by a host of impossibly soaring creatures against the sky above it. They didn’t give you starlight on a girl’s blond hair as she slid shrieking in excitement and happiness from the back of a flying horse and landed on a roof in London. They didn’t give you the look on the Blackthorns’ faces as they saw their brothers and friends coming back to them.

Livvy leaped at Julian, hurling her arms around his neck. Mark flung himself from his horse and half-tumbled down to find himself being hugged tightly by Dru and Tavvy. Ty came more quietly, but with the same incandescent happiness on his face. He waited for Livvy to be done nearly strangling her brother and then stepped in to take Julian’s hands.

And Julian, who Kit had always thought of as an almost frightening model of control and distance, grabbed his brother and yanked him close, his hands twisting in the back of Ty’s shirt. His eyes were shut, and Kit had to look away from the expression on his face.

He had never had anyone but his father, and he was sure beyond any words that his father had never loved him like that.

Mark came up to his brothers then, and Ty turned to look at him. Kit heard him say: “I wasn’t sure you would come back.”

Mark laid his hand on his brother’s shoulder, and spoke gruffly. “I’ll always come back to you, Tiberius. I am sorry if I ever led you to believe anything else.”

There were two other arrivals as well among the Blackthorns, who Kit didn’t recognize: a gorgeously scowling boy with blue-black hair that waved around his angular face, and a wide-shouldered, massive man wearing an alarming helmet with carved antlers protruding from either side. Both of them sat astride their horses silently, without dismounting. A faerie escort, perhaps, to keep the others safe? But how had the Blackthorns and Emma managed to secure a favor like that?

Then again, if anyone could manage to secure such a thing, it would be Julian Blackthorn. As Kit’s father used to say about various criminals, Julian was the kind of person who could descend into Hell and come out with the devil himself owing him a favor.

Diana was hugging Emma and then Cristina, tears shining on her face. Feeling awkwardly out of place at the reunion, Kit made his way to the edge of the railing. The clouds had cleared away, and he could see Millennium Bridge from here, lit up in rainbow colors. A train rattled over another bridge, casting its reflection into the water.

“Who are you?” said a voice at his elbow. Kit started and turned around. It was one of the two faeries he had noticed earlier, the scowling one. His dark hair, up close, looked less black than like a mixture of deep greens and blues. He brushed a bit of it away from his face, frowning; he had a full, slightly uneven mouth, but far more interesting were his eyes. Like Mark’s, they were two different colors. One was the silver of a polished shield; the other was a black so dark his pupil was barely visible.

“Kit,” said Kit.

The boy with the ocean hair nodded. “I’m Kieran,” he said. “Kieran Hunter.”

Hunter wasn’t a real sort of faerie name, Kit knew. Faeries didn’t generally give their true names, as names held power; Hunter just denoted what he was, the way nixies called themselves Waterborn. Kieran was of the Wild Hunt.

“Huh,” said Kit, thinking of the Cold Peace. “Are you a prisoner?”

“No,” said the faerie. “I’m Mark’s lover.”

Oh, Kit thought. The person he went into Faerie to save. He tried to stifle a look of amusement at the way faeries talked. Intellectually, he knew the word “lover” was part of traditional speech, but he couldn’t help it: He was from Los Angeles, and as far as he was concerned, Kieran had just said, Hello, I have sex with Mark Blackthorn. What about you?

“I thought Mark was dating Emma,” Kit said.

Kieran looked confused. A few of the curls of his hair seemed to darken, or perhaps it was a trick of the light. “I think you must be mistaken,” he said.

Kit raised an eyebrow. How close was this guy actually to Mark, after all? Maybe they’d just had a meaningless fling. Though why Mark would then have dragged half his family to Faerie to save him was a mystery.

Before he could say anything, Kieran turned his head, his attention diverted. “That must be the lovely Diana,” he said, gesturing toward the Blackthorns’ tutor. “Gwyn was most enraptured with her.”

“Gwyn’s the big guy? Antler helmet?” said Kit. Kieran nodded, watching as Gwyn dismounted his horse to speak with Diana, who looked quite tiny against his bulk, though she was a tall woman.

“Providence has brought us together again,” Gwyn said.

“I don’t believe in providence,” said Diana. She looked awkward, a little alarmed. She was holding her injured arm close against her. “Or an interventionist Heaven.”

“?‘There are more things in heaven and earth,’?” said Gwyn, “?‘than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’?”

Kit snorted. Diana looked flabbergasted. “Are you quoting Shakespeare?” she said. “I would have thought at least it would have been A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

“Faeries can’t stand A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” muttered Kieran. “Gets everything wrong.”

Gwyn’s lips twitched at the corners. “Speaking of dreams,” he said. “You have been in mine, and often.”

Diana looked stunned. The Blackthorns had quieted their loud reunion and were watching her and Gwyn with unabashed curiosity. Julian was even smiling a little; he was holding Tavvy, who had his arms hooked around his brother’s neck like a clinging koala.

“I would that you would meet me, formally, that I might court you,” said Gwyn. His large hands moved aimlessly at his sides, and Kit realized with a shock that he was nervous—this big, muscled man, the leader of the Wild Hunt, nervous. “We could together slay a frost giant, or devour a deer.”

“I don’t want to do either of those things,” said Diana after a moment.

Gwyn looked crestfallen.

“But I will go out with you,” she said, blushing. “Preferably to a nice restaurant. Bring flowers, and not the helmet.”

The Blackthorns burst into giggling applause. Kit leaned against the wall with Kieran, who was shaking his head in bemusement. “And thus was the proud leader of the Hunt felled by love,” he said. “I hope there will be a ballad about it someday.”

Kit watched Gwyn, who was ignoring the applause as he readied his horses to leave.

“You don’t look like the other Blackthorns,” said Kieran after a moment. “Your eyes are blue, but not like the ocean’s blue. More of an ordinary sky.”

Kit felt obscurely insulted. “I’m not a Blackthorn,” he said. “I’m a Herondale. Christopher Herondale.”

He waited. The name Herondale seemed to produce an explosive reaction in most denizens of the supernatural world. The boy with the ocean hair, though, didn’t bat an eye. “Then what are you doing here, if you are not family?” he asked.

Kit shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t belong, that’s for sure.”

Kieran smiled a sideways faerie smile. “That makes two of us.”