Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices, #2)

“It would help if we were touching,” he said in a matter-of-fact manner. “Put your hands on my back, maybe, or my shoulders.”

Emma moved up behind him. He was taller than her; lifting her hands to his shoulders would mean stretching her body into an awkward position. This close to him, she could feel the expansion of his rib cage when he breathed, see the tiny freckles on the back of his neck where the wind had blown his hair sideways. The arc of broad shoulders into narrower waist and hips, the length of his legs.

She placed her hands on his waist, as if she were riding behind him on a motorcycle, under his jacket but on top of his T-shirt. His skin was warm through the cotton.

“All right,” she said. Her breath moved his hair; a shiver went over his skin. She could feel it. She swallowed. “Go ahead.”

She half-closed her eyes as the stele scratched against the wall. He smelled like cut grass, which wasn’t surprising, considering he’d been rolling in it with the struggling piskie.

“Why wouldn’t anyone want to hear them?” she asked.

“Hear what?” Julian reached up. His T-shirt rose, and Emma found her hands on bare skin, taut over oblique muscles. Her breath caught.

“Any statements you had to make about, you know, anything,” Emma said, as his feet settled back onto the ground. Her hands were tangled in the fabric of his shirt now. She looked up to see a second Fire rune: This one was deeper, darker, and the flames at its edges shone brightly. The stone around it began to crack—

And the fire went out.

“It might not work,” Emma said. Her heart was pounding. She wanted this to work, and at the same time she didn’t. Their runes ought to be more powerful when created together; that was the case for all parabatai. But there was a limit to that power. Unless two parabatai were in love with each other. Jem had made it sound as if their power, then, could be almost infinite—that it might grow until it destroyed them.

Julian no longer loved her; she’d seen it in the way he’d kissed that faerie girl. Still, it would be hard to have to watch the proof.

But maybe it would be the best thing for her. She’d have to face reality sooner rather than later.

She slid her arms around Julian, clasping them together across his stomach. The act pressed her body up against his, her chest flush against his back. She felt him tense in surprise.

“Try one more time,” she said. “Go slowly.”

She heard his breathing quicken. His arm went up, and the stele began to scratch out another rune against the stone.

Instinctively, her hands moved up his chest. She heard the stele hitch and skip. Her palm settled over his heart. It was hammering, slamming against the inside of his rib cage.

Julian’s heartbeat. The hundred thousand other times she had heard or felt it crashed into her like an express train. Six years old, she had fallen off a wall she was balanced on and Julian had caught her; they had fallen together, and she had heard his heartbeat. She remembered the pulse in his throat as he held the Mortal Sword in the Council Hall. Racing each other up the beach, putting her fingers to his wrist and counting the beats per minute of his heart afterward. The syncopated rhythm as their heartbeats matched during the parabatai ceremony. The sound of the roar of his blood when he carried her out of the ocean. The steady beat of his heart as she’d laid her head on his chest that night.

Her body shuddered with the force of memory, and she felt its strength pulse through her, and into Julian, driving the force of the rune like a whip up through his arm, his hand, the stele. Fire.

Julian drew in his breath sharply, dropping his stele; the tip was glowing red. He reeled back and Emma’s hands fell away from him; she nearly stumbled, but he caught her, pulling her away from the building, into the churchyard. Both panting, they stared: The rune Julian had drawn on the wall of the church had seared its way straight through the stone. The boards over the windows cracked, and orange tongues of flame leaped out.

Julian looked at Emma. The fire sparkled and crackled in his eyes, more than a reflection. “We did that,” he said, his voice rising. “We did that.”

Emma stared back at him. She was clutching his arms, just above the elbows, muscle hard under her fingers. Jules seemed lit from within, burning with excitement. His skin was hot to the touch.

Their eyes met. And it was Julian, her Julian, no shutters down over his expression, nothing hidden, only the clear brilliance of his eyes and the heat in his gaze. Emma felt as if her heart was tearing apart her chest. She could hear the hard crackle of the flames all around them. Julian moved toward her, closer, splintering her awareness of the need to keep him distant, of anything else but him.

The sound of sirens echoed in Emma’s ears, the howl of the fire brigade, hurtling toward the church. Julian drew away from her, only far enough to clasp her hand. They fled from the church just as the first of the fire engines arrived.

*

Mark didn’t really know how they’d all gotten into the library. He vaguely remembered going to check on Tavvy—who was building an elaborate tower of blocks with Rafe and Max—and then to knock on Dru’s door; she was in her room, and disinclined to come out, which seemed like a good situation. There was no reason to frighten her before it was necessary.

Still, Mark would have liked to see her. With Julian and Helen gone, and now Ty and Livvy somewhere in London, in danger, he felt like a house whose foundations had been ripped out from under it. He was desperately grateful that Dru and Tavvy were both safe, and also that at the moment, they didn’t need him. He didn’t know how Julian had done it all those years: how you were supposed to be strong for other people when you didn’t know how to be strong for yourself. He knew it was faintly ridiculous for him, an adult, to want the company of his thirteen-year-old sister to fortify his resolve, but there it was. And he was ashamed of it.

He was conscious of Cristina, speaking in rapid-fire Spanish to Magnus. Of Kieran, leaning on one of the tables, his head hanging down: His hair was a purple-black color, like the darkest part of water. Alec returning from the hallway with a pile of clothes in his hands. “These are Ty’s, Livvy’s, and Kit’s,” he said, handing them to Magnus. “I got them from their rooms.”

Magnus looked over at Mark. “Still nothing on the phone?”

Mark tried to breathe deeply. He’d called Emma and Julian as well as sending texts, but there had been no reply. Cristina had said she’d heard from Emma while she was in the library, and they both seemed to be fine. Mark knew that Emma and Julian were smart and careful, and that there was no better warrior than Emma. Worry pinched at his heart just the same.

But he had to focus on Livvy and Ty and Kit. Kit had next to no training, and Livvy and Ty were so young. He knew he’d been the same age when he was taken by the Hunt, but they were children to him nonetheless.

“Nothing from Emma and Jules,” he said. “I’ve tried Ty a dozen, two dozen times already. No answer.” He swallowed back the dread. There were a million reasons Ty might not pick up his phone that didn’t have to do with the Riders.

The Riders of Mannan. Even though he knew he was in the library of the London Institute, watching as Magnus Bane began passing his hands over the clothes, beginning the tracking spell, part of him was in Faerie, hearing the tales of the Riders, the murderous assassins of the Unseelie Court. They slept beneath a hill until they were wakened, usually in times of war. He’d heard them called the King’s Hounds, for once they had a whiff of their prey, they could follow them across miles of sea, earth, and sky in order to take their lives.