Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices, #2)

Ty shook his head. “I know Livvy,” he said. “I know when she’s angry. I know the things she does. She’s my twin. I don’t know those things about anyone else, but I know them about her.” He shrugged. “The argument was about me, wasn’t it?”

Kit nodded.

“Everyone always tries to protect me,” said Ty. “Julian tries to protect me from everything. Livvy tries to protect me from being disappointed. She didn’t want me to know that you might leave, but I’ve always known it. Jules and Livvy, they have a hard time imagining that I’ve grown up. That I might understand that some things are temporary.”

“You mean me,” Kit said. “That I’m temporary.”

“It’s your choice to stay or leave,” said Ty. “In Limehouse, I thought maybe it would be leaving.”

“But what about you?” said Kit. “I thought you were going to the Scholomance. And I could never go there. I don’t even have basic training.”

Kit set his water glass down. Ty immediately picked it up and began turning it in his hands. It was made of milky glass, rough on the outside, and he seemed to like the texture.

Ty was silent, and in that silence, Kit thought of Ty’s headphones, the music in his ears, the whispered words, the way he touched things with such total concentration: smooth stones, rough glass, silk and leather and textured linen. There were people in the world, he knew, who thought human beings like Ty did those things for no reason—because they were inexplicable. Broken.

Kit felt a wash of rage go through him. How could they not understand everything Ty did had a reason? If an ambulance siren blared in your ears, you covered them. If something hit you, you doubled up to protect yourself from hurt.

But not everyone felt and heard exactly the same way. Ty heard everything twice as loud and fast as everyone else. The headphones and the music, Kit sensed, were a buffer: They deadened not just other noises, but also feelings that would otherwise be too intense. They protected him from hurt.

He couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like to live so intensely, to feel things so much, to have the world sway into and out of too-bright colors and too-bright noises. When every sound and feeling was jacked up to eleven, it only made sense to calm yourself by concentrating all your energy on something small that you could master—a mass of pipe cleaners to unravel, the pebbled surface of a glass between your fingers.

“I don’t want to tell you not to go to the Scholomance if it’s what you want,” said Kit. “But I would just say that it isn’t always about people trying to protect you, or knowing what’s best for you, or thinking they do. Sometimes they just know they’d miss you.”

“Livvy would miss me—”

“Your whole family would miss you,” said Kit, “and I would miss you.”

It was a bit like stepping off a cliff, far scarier than any con Kit had ever run for his dad, any Downworlder or demon he’d ever met. Ty looked up in surprise, forgetting the glass in his hands. He was blushing. It was very visible against his pale skin. “You would?”

“Yeah,” said Kit, “but like I said, I don’t want to stop you from going if you want to—”

“I don’t,” Ty said. “I changed my mind.” He set the glass down. “Not because of you. Because the Scholomance appears to be full of assholes.”

Kit burst out laughing. Ty looked even more astonished than he had when Kit had said he’d miss him. But after a second, he started to laugh too. They were both laughing, Kit doubled up over the blankets, when Magnus came into the room. He looked at the two of them and shook his head.

“Bedlam,” he said, and went over to the counter where the glass tubes and funnels had been set up. He gave them a pleased look. “Not that anyone here probably cares,” he said, “but the antidote to the binding spell is ready. We should have no problem leaving for Idris tomorrow.”

*

Cristina felt as if a tornado had blown through the room. She set her balisong down on the mantel and turned to Mark.

He was leaning against the wall, his eyes wide but not focused on anything. She remembered an old book she had read when she was a girl. There had been a boy in it whose eyes had been two different colors, a knight in the Crusades. One eye for God, the book had said, and one for the devil.

A boy who had been split down the middle, part good and part evil. Just as Mark was split between faerie and Nephilim. She could see the battle raging in him now, though all his anger was for himself.

“Mark,” she began. “It is not—”

“Don’t say it’s not my fault,” he said tonelessly. “I couldn’t stand it, Cristina.”

“It is not only your fault,” said Cristina. “We all knew. It is all our fault. It was not the right thing to do, but we had very few choices. And Kieran did wrong you.”

“I still shouldn’t have lied to him.”

A ragged dark crack across the plaster of Cristina’s wall, bulging through the paint, was the only sign of what had happened. That, and the crushed golden acorn on the hearth. “I am only saying that if you can forgive him, you should forgive yourself as well,” she said.

“Can you come here?” Mark said, in a strangled sort of voice.

Mark had his eyes closed and was clenching and unclenching his hands. She nearly tripped getting to him across the room. He seemed to sense her approach; without opening his eyes, he reached for her and caught her hand in a bone-crushing grip.

Cristina glanced down. He held her hand so tightly it should have hurt, but all she saw was the red marks around both of their wrists. This close together, they had faded to almost nothing.

She felt again what she had felt that night in the ballroom, as if the binding spell amplified their nearness into something else, a thing that dragged her mind back to that hill in Faerie, the memory of being wrapped up in Mark.

Mark’s mouth found hers. She heard him groan: He was kissing her hard and desperately; her body felt as if fire was pouring through it, turning her light as ashes.

Yet she could not forget Kieran kissing Mark in front of her, forceful and deliberate. It seemed she could not think of Mark now without thinking of Kieran, too. Could not see blue and gold eyes without seeing black and silver.

“Mark.” She spoke against his lips. His hands were on her, stirring her blood to soft heat. “This is not the right way to make yourself forget.”

He drew away from her. “I want to hold you,” he said. “I want it very badly.” He let go of her slowly, as if the motion were an effort. “But it would not be fair. Not to you or Kieran or myself. Not now.”

Cristina touched the back of his hand. “You must go to Kieran and make things right between you. He is too important a part of you, Mark.”

“You heard what the King said.” Mark let his head fall back against the wall. “He’ll kill Kieran for testifying. He’ll hunt him forever. That’s our doing.”

“He agreed to it—”

“Without knowing the truth! He agreed to it because he thought he loved me and I loved him—”

“Isn’t that true?” Cristina said. “And even if it wasn’t, he didn’t just forget that you fought. He forgot what he did. He forgot what he owes. He forgot his own guilt. And that is part of why he is so angry. Not at you, but at himself.”

Mark’s hand tightened on hers. “We owe each other now, Kieran and I,” he said. “I have endangered him. The Unseelie King knows he plans to testify. He’s sworn to hunt Kieran. Cristina, what do we do?”

“We try to keep him safe,” Cristina said. “Whether he testifies or not, the King won’t forgive him. We need to find a place Kieran will be protected.” Her chin jerked up as realization hit her. “I know exactly where. Mark, we must—”

There was a knock on the door. They stepped away from each other as it swung open; both of them had been expecting Kieran, and Mark’s disappointment when it turned out to be Magnus was clear.