Lord of Shadows

“It looks a bit like Faerie,” said Emma, leaning against the window. “You know, without the rivers of blood or the high-body-count dance parties. More scones, less death.”

Julian glanced up. He had his sketchbook on his knees and a black box of colored pencils on the seat next to him. “I think that’s what it says on the front gate of Buckingham Palace,” he said. He sounded calm, entirely neutral. The Julian who had snapped at her in the entryway of the Institute was gone. This was polite Julian, gracious Julian. Putting-up-a-front-for-strangers Julian.

There was absolutely no way she could handle interacting only with that Julian for however long they were in Cornwall. “So,” she said. “Are you still angry?”

He looked at her for a long moment and set his sketchbook aside. “I’m sorry,” he said. “What I said—that was unacceptable and cruel.”

Emma stood up and leaned against the window. The countryside flew by: gray, green, gray. “Why did you say it?”

“I was angry.” She could see his reflection in the window, looking up at her. “I was angry about Mark.”

“I didn’t know you were that invested in our relationship.”

“He’s my brother.” Julian touched his own face as he spoke, unconsciously, as if to connect with those features—the long cheekbones and eyelashes—that were so like Mark’s. “He’s not—he gets hurt easily.”

“He’s fine,” she said. “I promise you.”

“It’s more than that.” His gaze was steady. “When you were together, at least I could feel like you were both with someone I cared about and could trust. You loved someone I loved too. Is that likely to happen again?”

“I don’t know what’s likely to happen,” she said. I know you have nothing to worry about. I wasn’t in love with Mark. I’ll never be in love with anyone again who isn’t you. “Just that there are things we can and can’t control.”

“Em,” he said. “This is me we’re talking about.”

She turned away from the window, pressed her back to the cold glass. She was looking at Julian directly, not just his reflection. And though his face betrayed no anger, his eyes at least were open and honest. It was real Julian, not pretend Julian now. “So you admit you’re a control freak?”

He smiled, the sweet smile that went straight to Emma’s heart because it recalled for her the Julian of her childhood. It was like sun, warmth, the sea, and the beach all rolled up in one punch to the heart. “I admit nothing.”

“Fine,” she said. She didn’t have to say she forgave him and knew he forgave her; they both knew it. Instead she sat down in the seat opposite him and gestured toward his art supplies. “What are you drawing?”

He picked up the sketchbook, turning it so she could see his work—a gorgeous rendition of a stone bridge they’d passed, surrounded by the drooping boughs of oak trees.

“You could sketch me,” said Emma. She flung herself down onto her seat, leaning her head on her hand. “?‘Draw me like one of your French girls.’?”

Julian grinned. “I hate that movie,” he said. “You know I do.”

Emma sat up indignantly. “The first time we watched Titanic, you cried.”

“I had seasonal allergies,” Jules said. He’d started to draw again, but his smile still lingered. This was the heart of her and Julian, Emma thought. This gentle joking, this easy amusement. It almost surprised her. But this was what they always returned to, the comfort of their childhood—like birds returning and returning in migratory patterns toward their home.

“I wish we could get in touch with Jem and Tessa,” Emma said. Green fields flashed by the window in a blur. A woman was pushing a refreshment cart up and down the narrow train corridor. “And Jace and Clary. Tell them about Annabel and Malcolm and everything.”

“The whole Clave knows about Malcolm’s return. I’m sure they have their ways of finding out, too.”

“But only we really know about Annabel,” said Emma.

“I drew her,” Julian said. “I thought somehow if we could look at her, it might help us find her.”

He turned his sketch pad. Emma suppressed a small shudder. Not because the face looking out was hideous—it wasn’t. It was a young face, oval and even-featured, almost lost in a cloud of dark hair. But an air of something haunted and almost feral burned in Annabel’s eyes; she clutched her hands at her throat, as if trying to wrap herself in a covering that had vanished.

“Where could she be?” Emma wondered aloud. “Where would you go, if you were so sad?”

“Do you think she looks sad?”

“Don’t you?”

“I thought she seemed angry.”

“She did kill Malcolm,” said Emma. “I don’t understand why she’d do that—he brought her back. He loved her.”

“Maybe she didn’t want to be brought back.” He was still looking down at the sketch. “Maybe she was happy where she was. Strife, agony, loss—those are things the living experience.” He closed the sketchbook as the train pulled into a small white station whose sign read LISKEARD. They had arrived.

*

“Was this planned?” Kieran said. His expression was stony. “It cannot be a coincidence.”

Mark raised his eyebrows. Cristina was sitting on the edge of one of the beds in the infirmary, her wrist bandaged; Mark’s injury was hidden by the sleeve of his sweater. There was no one else in the room. Tavvy had been upset by the sight of blood on Mark and Cristina, and Dru had taken him away to calm him down. Livvy and the other two boys had left for Blackthorn Hall while Cristina was at the train station.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Mark said. “You think Cristina and I planned to spray blood all over London for fun?”

Cristina looked at him in surprise; he sounded more human than she’d ever heard him.

“Such a binding spell,” said Kieran. “You must have held your wrists out for it. You would have to have remained still while you were bound.”

He sounded bewildered, hurt. He looked enormously out of place in his breeches and linen shirt, now very crumpled, in the heart of the Institute. All around them were hospital-style beds, glass and copper jars of tinctures and powders, stacks of bandages and runed medical tools.

“It happened at a revel,” said Mark. “We couldn’t expect it—we didn’t expect it. And no one would want this, no one would set it up on purpose, Kieran.”

“A faerie would,” Kieran said. “It is just the sort of thing one of us would do.”

“I am not a faerie,” said Mark.

Kieran flinched, and Cristina saw the hurt in his eyes. She felt a wave of sympathetic pain for him. It must be horrible to be so alone.

Even Mark looked stricken. “I didn’t mean that,” he said. “I am not only a faerie.”

“And how glad you are,” said Kieran, “how you brag of it at every opportunity.”

“Please,” said Cristina, “please, don’t fight. We need to be on the same side in this.”

Kieran turned puzzled eyes on her. Then he stepped close to Mark; he put his hands on Mark’s shoulders. They were nearly the same height. Mark didn’t avert his gaze. “There is only one way I know that you cannot lie,” Kieran said, and kissed Mark on the mouth.

A pulse of pain went through Cristina’s wrist. She had no idea if it was random or some reflection of the intensity of what Mark was feeling. There was no way he could reject the kiss, not without rejecting Kieran and severing the delicate chain of lies that kept the faerie prince bound here.

If, indeed, Mark didn’t want to kiss Kieran back. Cristina couldn’t tell; he returned the kiss with a fierceness like the fierceness Cristina had seen in him the first time she’d glimpsed him with Kieran. But there was more anger in it now. He gripped Kieran’s shoulders, his fingers digging in; the force of the kiss angled Kieran’s head back. He sucked at Kieran’s bottom lip and bit it, and Kieran gasped.

They broke apart. Kieran touched his mouth; there was blood on his lip, and hot triumph in his eyes. “You did not look away,” he said to Cristina. “Was it that interesting?”