Queen of Air and Darkness (The Dark Artifices #3)

SOME FAR-OFF HAPPIER SEA


The wound was long but not deep, a slice across Kieran’s right upper arm. Kieran sat with his teeth gritted atop the bed in one of the Institute’s empty guest rooms, his sleeve cut away by Cristina’s balisong. Mark leaned nervously against a nearby wall, watching.

Cristina had been a little surprised at how muscular Kieran’s arm was; even after he’d carried her through London, she’d thought of faeries as delicate, fine-boned. And he was, but there was toughness there too. His muscles seemed more tightly wrapped against his bones than a human’s, giving his body a lean, tensile strength.

She finished carefully mopping the blood away from the cut and ran her fingers lightly over the skin around it. Kieran shivered, half-closing his eyes. She felt guilty for causing him pain. “I see no sign of infection or need for the wound to be stitched,” she said. “Bandaging it should do the trick.”

Kieran looked at her sideways. It was hard to discern his expression in the shadows: There was only one lamp in the room, and it was heavily shaded.

“I’m sorry to have brought this trouble to you,” Kieran said in a soft voice. A nighttime voice, careful of waking those who might be sleeping. “Both of you.”

“You didn’t bring us trouble,” said Mark, his voice roughened with tiredness. “You brought us information that can help us save the lives of people we love. We’re grateful.”

Kieran frowned, as if he weren’t too fond of the word “grateful.” Before Cristina could add anything, a cry split the night—a howl of miserable terror.

Even knowing what it was, Cristina shivered. “Tavvy,” she said.

“He’s having a nightmare,” Mark confirmed.

“Poor child,” said Kieran. “The terrors of the night are grim indeed.”

“He’ll be all right,” Mark said, though worry shadowed his expression. “He wasn’t there when Livvy died, thank the Angel, but I think he heard whispers. Perhaps we shouldn’t have brought him to the funeral. To see the pyres—”

“I believe such things are a comfort,” Cristina said. “I believe they allow our souls to say good-bye.”

The door creaked open—someone ought to see to the hinges—and Helen stuck her head in, looking distressed. “Mark, will you go to Tavvy?”

Mark hesitated. “Helen, I shouldn’t—”

“Please.” Helen leaned exhaustedly against the doorjamb. “He’s not used to me yet and he won’t stop crying.”

“I’ll take care of Kieran,” Cristina said, with more confidence than she felt.

Mark followed Helen from the room with clear reluctance. Feeling awkward at being left alone with Kieran, Cristina took a bandage from the kit and began to wind it around his upper arm. “I always to seem to end up tending your wounds,” she said half-jokingly.

But Kieran did not smile. “That must be why,” he said, “whenever I suffer, I now long for the touch of your hands.”

Cristina looked at him in surprise. He was clearly more delirious than she had thought. She laid a hand on his forehead: He was burning up. She wondered what a normal temperature for faeries was.

“Lie down.” She tied off the bandage. “You should rest.”

Her hair swung forward as she bent over him. He reached up and tucked a lock behind her ear. She went still, her heart thudding. “I thought of you at the Scholomance,” he said. “I thought of you every time anyone used Diego’s name, Rosales. I could not stop thinking of you.”

“Did you want to?” Her voice shook. “Stop thinking of me?”

He touched her hair again, his fingers light where they brushed her cheek. The sensation made goose bumps flood across her skin. “I know that you and Mark are together. I do not know where I fit into all of that.” His cheeks were fever flushed. “I know how much I have hurt you both. I feel it, down in my bones. I would never want to hurt either of you a second time. Tomorrow I will leave here, and neither of you need ever see me again.”

“No!” Cristina exclaimed, with a force that surprised her. “Do not go, not alone.”

“Cristina.” His right hand came up to curve around her other cheek; he was cupping her face. His skin was hot; she could see the blotches of fever on his cheeks, his collarbone. “Princess. You will be better off without me.”

“I am not a princess,” she said; she was leaning over him, one of her hands braced against the blanket. His face was close to hers, so close she could see the dark fringe of his eyelashes. “And I do not want you to go.”

He sat up, his hands still cradling her face. She gave a little gasp and felt her own temperature spike at the warmth of his hands as they moved from her face to her shoulders, to the curve of her waist, drawing her toward him. She let herself fall atop him, her body stretched along his, their hips and chests aligned. He was tense as a drawn bow, tight and arched beneath her. His hands were fever hot, carding through her soft hair.

She placed her palms against his hard chest. It rose and fell rapidly. Her mind was spinning. She wanted to press her lips against the fine skin over his cheekbone, graze his jaw with kisses. She wanted, and the wanting shocked her, the intensity of it.

She had never felt such intensity for anyone but Mark.

Mark. She drew away from Kieran, nearly tumbling to the coverlet. “Kieran, I—we shouldn’t, you—you have a fever.”

He rolled onto his side, eyes bright as he studied her. “I do have a fever,” he said. “I am not out of my mind, though. I have been wanting to hold you for a long time.”

“You haven’t even known me that long,” she whispered, though she knew she was lying in a very human way, hiding what she really meant behind irrelevancies. The truth was that she had wanted Kieran, too, and she suspected she had for some time. “Lie back. You need to rest. We will have plenty of time to . . . talk more if you do not leave.” She sat up. “Promise me you won’t leave.”

Kieran’s eyes were averted, his lashes like the rays of a dark star. “I should not stay. I will only bring sorrow to you and to Mark.”

“Promise me,” Cristina hissed.

“I promise I will stay,” he said at last. “But I cannot promise that you will not regret that I did.”

*

Nene showed Emma into the room she and Julian had stayed in the last time they’d been in the Seelie Court. The silvery-quartz walls pulsed with low light, and the rose hedge Emma remembered was gone. Instead the waterfall cascaded fiercely down the rock wall as if powered by a flood, pouring into an unshaded pool several feet below the floor.

“It’s kind of Fergus to let us stay in his room,” Emma said as Nene ushered her in.

“Fergus has no choice,” said Nene serenely. “It’s what the Queen desires.”

Emma blinked. That seemed odd and not auspicious. Why did the Queen care where they stayed? Her gaze strayed over the rest of the room—there was a table she could put her bag down on, there was a sofa made of vines twining closely together. . . . She frowned. “Where’s the bed?”

“Behind the waterfall, in Fergus’s bower.”

“His what?”

“His bower.” Nene pointed. Sure enough, a set of stone steps wound behind the curtain of the waterfall. Apparently Fergus liked to mix it up in the design area. “What is wrong with a bower?”

“Nothing,” said Emma. “I was thinking of getting one myself.”

Nene gave her a suspicious look before leaving her alone. Emma heard the key turn in the lock as she shut the door and didn’t even bother to try the knob. Even if she escaped from the room, she’d have no way of finding her way through the corridors. And it wasn’t as if she’d go anywhere without Julian, who wanted to be here anyway.