Lord of Shadows

Gwyn made no attempt at small talk as his horse soared through the air over Alicante and then the woods of Brocelind Forest. Diana was grateful for it. With the wind in her hair, cool and soft, and the forest spread out below her in deep green shadow, she felt freer than she had in what seemed like a long time. Talking would have been a distraction.

Dawn gave way to daylight as she watched the world rushing by under her: the sudden flash of water, the graceful shapes of fir trees and white pine. When Gwyn pointed the horse’s head downward, and it began to descend, she felt a pang of disappointment and a sudden flash of kinship with Mark. No wonder he had missed the Hunt; no wonder that even when he was back with his family, he had yearned for the sky.

They landed in a small clearing between linden trees. Gwyn slid from the horse’s back and offered Diana his hand to clamber down to the ground: The thick green moss was soft on her bare feet. She wandered among the white flowers and admired the blue sky while he spread out a linen cloth and food unpacked from his saddlebag.

She couldn’t quite hold back the urge to laugh—here she was, Diana Wrayburn, of the law-abiding and respectable Wrayburn family, about to have a picnic with the leader of the Wild Hunt.

“Come,” he said, when he was done and seated on the ground. His horse had wandered off to crop grass at the edge of the clearing. “You must be hungry.”

To Diana’s surprise, she found she was—and hungrier when she tasted the food: delicious fruit, cured meat, thick bread and honey, and glasses of wine that tasted the way rubies looked.

Maybe it was the wine, but she found that Gwyn, despite his quiet nature, was easy to talk to. He asked her about herself, though not her past; her passions instead, her interests and her dreams. She found herself telling him of her love for teaching, how she wished to teach at the Academy someday. He asked her about the Blackthorns, and how Mark was settling in, and nodded gravely at her answers.

He was not beautiful in the manner of many faeries, but she found his face more pleasing for it. His hair was thick and brown, his hands wide and capable and strong. There were scars on his skin—at his neck and chest, and on the backs of his palms—but that made her think of her own scars and Shadowhunting. It was comforting in its familiarity.

“Why are there no women in the Wild Hunt?” she asked. It was something she had always wondered.

“Women are too savage,” he said with a grin. “We reap the dead. It was discovered that when Rhiannon’s Ladies ran with the Hunt, they were unwilling to wait until the dead were dead.”

Diana laughed. “Rhiannon. The name is familiar.”

“The women left the hunt and became Adar Rhiannon. The Birds of Rhiannon. Some call them ‘Valkyrie.’?”

She smiled at him sadly. “Faerie can be so lovely,” she said. “And yet also terrible.”

“You are thinking of Mark?”

“Mark loves his family,” she said. “And they are happy to have him back. But he does miss the Hunt. Which is hard to understand sometimes. When he came to us, he was so scarred, in body and mind.”

“Many Shadowhunters are scarred,” he said. “That does not mean they no longer wish to be Shadowhunters.”

“I’m not sure it’s the same.”

“I am not sure it is so different.” He leaned back against a large gray boulder. “Mark was a fine Hunter, but his heart was not in it. It is not the Hunt he misses, but the freedom and the open sky, and perhaps Kieran.”

“You knew they had fought,” said Diana. “But when you came to us, you were so sure Mark would save him.”

“Shadowhunters desire to save everyone. And more so when there is love.”

“You think Mark still loves Kieran?”

“I think you cannot root out love entirely. I think where there has been love, there will always be embers, as the remains of a bonfire outlast the flame.”

“But they die eventually. They become ashes.”

Gwyn sat forward. His eyes, blue and black, were grave on hers. “Have you ever loved?”

She shook her head. She could feel the shaking all through her nerves—the anticipation, and the fear. “Not like that.” She should tell him why, she thought. But the words didn’t come.

“That is a shame,” he said. “I think to be loved by you would be a tremendous honor.”

“You barely know me at all,” Diana said. I shouldn’t be affected by his words. I shouldn’t want this. But she did, in a way she had tried to bury long ago.

“I saw who you are in your eyes the night I came to the Institute,” said Gwyn. “Your bravery.”

“Bravery,” echoed Diana. “The kind that kills demons, yes. Yet there are many kinds of bravery.”

His deep eyes flashed. “Diana—”

But she was on her feet, walking to the edge of the glade, more for the relief of movement than anything else. Gwyn’s horse whinnied as she neared it, backing away.

“Be careful,” Gwyn said. He had risen, but was not following her. “My Wild Hunt horses can be uneasy around women. They have little experience with them.”

Diana paused for a moment, then stepped around the horse, giving it a wide berth. As she neared the edge of the wood, she caught a flash of something pale out of the corner of her eye.

She moved closer, realizing suddenly how vulnerable she was, here in the open without her weapons, wearing only pajamas. How had she agreed to this? What had Gwyn said to convince her?

I saw who you are.

She pushed the words to the back of her mind, reaching a hand out to steady herself on the slender trunk of a linden. Her eyes saw before her mind could process: a bizarre sight, a circle of blasted nothingness in the center of Brocelind. Land like ash, trees burned to stumps, as if acid had charred away everything living.

“By the Angel,” she whispered.

“It is blight.” Gwyn spoke from behind her, his big shoulders taut with tension, his jaw set. “I have seen this before only in Faerie. It is the mark of a great dark magic.”

There were burned places, white as ash, like the surface of the moon.

Diana gripped the tree trunk harder. “Take me back,” she said. “I need to return to Alicante.”



21



THE EYE UNCLOSED



Mark sat on the edge of his bed, examining his wrist. The wound that wrapped it appeared darker, crusted with blood at the edges, and the bruises that radiated out from it shaded from deep red to purple.

“Let me bandage it,” Kieran said. He sat on the nightstand, his feet half pulled up under him. His hair was tangled and he was barefoot. It looked as if a wild creature had alighted on some piece of civilization: a hawk balancing on the head of a statue. “At least let me do that for you.”

“Bandaging it won’t help,” Mark said. “Like Magnus said—it won’t heal until the spell’s off.”

“Then do it for me. I cannot bear looking at it.”

Mark looked at Kieran in surprise. In the Wild Hunt, they had seen their fair share of injuries and blood, and Kieran had never been squeamish.

“There are bandages in there.” Mark indicated the drawer of the nightstand. He watched as Kieran hopped down and retrieved what he needed, then returned to the bed and to him.

Kieran sat down and took Mark’s wrist. His hands were clever and capable, blunt-nailed, calloused from years of fighting and riding. (Cristina’s hands were calloused, too, but her wrists and fingertips were smooth and soft. Mark remembered the feel of them against his cheek in the faerie grove.)

“You are so distant, Mark,” Kieran said. “Further from me now than you were when I was in Faerie and you were in the human world.”

Mark looked steadfastly at his wrist, now wrapped in a bracelet of bandage. Kieran tied the knot expertly and set the box aside. “You can’t stay here forever, Kier,” Mark said. “And when you go, we will be separated. I can’t not think about that.”