Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices, #2)

There was no rule that Kieran wasn’t supposed to leave the Institute, not really. But he hated the city, Mark had said. Cold iron and steel everywhere. And besides, they were meant to keep him safe with them, not let him slip away before he could testify in front of the Clave. Not let anything happen to him.

And maybe he was upset. Maybe he was angry at Mark, jealous, though he hadn’t shown it the night before. She slid off the windowsill. Kieran was already slipping through the opening of the gate, into the rainy shadows beyond, where he seemed to flicker and vanish, as faeries did.

Cristina dashed out of the library. She thought she heard someone call after her as she ran down the hallway, but she didn’t dare pause. Kieran was fast. She’d lose him.

There was no time to stop to put on a Soundless rune, no time to look for her stele. She hurried down the stairs and grabbed up a jacket hanging on a peg in the entryway. She slid her arms into it and ducked out into the courtyard.

A throb went through her wrist, a warning ache that she was leaving Mark behind. She ignored it, following Kieran through the gate.

Maybe he wasn’t doing anything wrong, she told herself, trying to be fair. He wasn’t a prisoner in the Institute. Maybe Mark knew about this.

Kieran was hurrying down the narrow street, slipping from shadow to shadow. There was something furtive about the way he moved. Cristina was sure of it.

She kept to the side of the road as she followed him. The streets were deserted, damp with a sprinkling of rain. Without a glamour rune, Cristina was intensely conscious of not being spotted by a mundane—her runes were very visible, and she couldn’t be sure they wouldn’t react in a way that would tip Kieran off.

She worried that eventually they’d reach a busier street, and she’d be seen. Her arm was more than throbbing now; a sharp pain was lancing through it, as if a steel wire was being tightened around her wrist.

Yet as Kieran moved deeper into the heart of the city, the streets seemed to grow narrower rather than wider. The electric lights dimmed. The small iron fences around the trees vanished, and the branches above her began to reach together across the roads, forming a green canopy.

Kieran walked ahead of her steadily, a shadow among shadows.

Finally they reached a square of brick buildings facing inward, their fronts covered in ivy and green trellises. In the center of the square was a small patch of ordinary city greenery: a few trees, flat, well-cared-for grass, and a stone fountain in the middle. The faint splashing of water was audible as Cristina slipped behind a tree, pressing herself against the bark, and peered around the side at Kieran.

He had paused by the fountain, and a figure in a green cloak was approaching him, leisurely, from the far side of the small park. His face was familiar: He had soft brown skin and eyes that gleamed even in the darkness. His hands were long and slender; under the cloak, he wore a doublet worked with the broken crown of the Unseelie Court. It was Adaon.

“Kieran,” he said wearily. “Why did you summon me?”

Kieran gave a small bow. Cristina could sense that he was nervous. It was surprising, that she knew Kieran enough to know when he was nervous. She would have said he was a near stranger.

“Adaon, my brother,” he said. “I need your help. I need what you know of spells.”

Kieran’s brother arched an eyebrow. “I would not set to casting spells in the mundane world, were I you, little dark one. You are among Nephilim, and they will disapprove, as will the warlocks and witches of this place.”

“I do not want to cast a spell. I want to undo one. A binding spell.”

“Ah,” said Adaon. “Who does it bind?”

“Mark,” said Kieran.

“Mark,” Adaon echoed, a little mockingly. “What is so special about him, that you care if he is bound? Or should he be bound only to you?”

“I would not want that,” Kieran said fiercely. “I would never want that. He should love me freely.”

“Binding is not love, though it can reveal feelings otherwise buried.” Adaon looked thoughtful. “I had not imagined I would hear you speak so, little dark one. When you were a child, you took what you wanted with no thought of the cost.”

“No one in the Wild Hunt remains a child,” said Kieran.

“It is a pity you were sent away,” said Adaon. “You would have made a good King after our father, and the Court loved you.”

Kieran shook his head. “I would not want to be King.”

“Because you would have to give up Mark,” said Adaon. “But every king gives up something. It is the nature of kings.”

“But kings are not in my nature.” Kieran tilted his head back to look up at his taller brother. “I think you are the one who would make a ruler, brother. Someone to bring peace back to the Lands.”

“This is not just about a binding spell, is it?” said Adaon. “There is something else to all of this. Our father believes you have taken refuge with Shadowhunters to escape his wrath; I admit, I assumed the same. Is there more?”

“There might be,” said Kieran. “I know you will not move against our father, but I also know you do not like him, or find his rule fair. If the throne were open, would you take it?”

“Kieran,” said Adaon. “These are not things of which we speak.”

“There has been bloodshed for so long, and no hope,” said Kieran. “This is not about my safety alone. You must believe that.”

“What are you planning, Kieran?” said Adaon. “What trouble have you gotten yourself into now?”

A hand clapped itself across Cristina’s mouth. Another arm whipped around her, securing her. Her body jackknifed in surprise and she felt the grip on her loosen. She jerked her head backward, felt her skull connect with someone’s face, and heard a yowl of pain.

“Who’s there?” Adaon spun, hand on the hilt of his blade. “Show yourself!”

Something dug into Cristina’s throat—something long and sharp. The blade of a knife. She froze.

*

“We should go,” Emma whispered. She didn’t ask Julian what Annabel had meant. She suspected they both knew.

Something dark and slippery flashed by across the transept, something that moved with a grotesque fluidity. The room seemed to darken. Emma wrinkled her nose—the rotten smell of demonic presence was suddenly all around, as if she’d opened a box full of a horrible potpourri.

Julian’s face was luminous-pale in the shadows. He crumpled up the letter in his hand and they began to back out of the church, taking careful steps, the seraph blade offering flickering illumination. They were halfway to the exit when there was an enormous crash—the two big front doors of the church had slammed shut.

Faintly, Emma heard the giggle of a piskie.

They spun around as the altar overturned. It hit the ground with a shattering thud.

“You go left,” Emma whispered. “I’ll go right.”

Julian slipped away noiselessly. Emma could still sense him there, his presence nearby. They had paused to rune each other halfway from the town to the church, looking out over Talland Bay and the blue ocean. Her runes prickled alive now as she slipped down the row of a pew and made her way along the inside wall of the church.

She had reached the nave. Shadows gathered thickly here, but her Night Vision rune was sparking and she was finding it easier to see in the dark. She could see the overturned altar, the huge blot of dried blood that stained the stone floor. There was a bloody handprint on one of the nearby pillars. It looked wrong and horrible, inside a church like this; it made Emma think of an Institute defiled.

Of Sebastian, spilling blood at the threshold of the Los Angeles stronghold of the Shadowhunters.

She flinched, and for just that moment of memory, her focus was diverted. Something flickered at the edge of her vision, just as Julian’s voice exploded in her ears: “Emma, look out!”