Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices, #2)

She looked around expectantly.

“Wow,” said Kit. He really was a Herondale, Emma thought. He’d managed to insert Jace-levels of indifference and sarcasm into one word.

“I bet you can’t wait to get to the Academy,” said Zara. “Since you’re a Herondale, you’ll certainly excel. I could put in a good word for you.”

Kit was silent. Diana cleared her throat. “So what are your plans for tomorrow, Zara, Diego? Is there anything the Institute can do to assist you?”

“Now that you mention it,” Zara said, “it would be incredibly useful . . .”

Everyone, even Kit, leaned forward with interest.

“If, while we were gone during the day, you did our laundry. Ocean water does ruin clothes quickly, don’t you find?”

*

Night fell with the suddenness of shadows in the desert, but despite the sound of waves coming in through her window, Cristina couldn’t sleep.

Thoughts of home tore at her. Her mother, her cousins. Better, past days with Diego and Jaime: She remembered a weekend she had spent with them once, tracking a demon in the dilapidated ghost town of Guerrero Viejo. The dreamlike landscape all around them: half-drowned houses, feathery weeds, buildings long discolored by water. She had lain on a rock with Jaime under uncountable stars, and they had told each other what they wanted most in the world: she, to end the Cold Peace; he, to bring honor back to his family.

Exasperated, she got out of bed and went downstairs, with only witchlight to illuminate her steps. The stairs were dark and quiet, and she found her way out the back door of the Institute with little noise.

Moonlight swept across the small dirt lot where the Institute’s car was parked. Behind the lot was a garden, where white marble classical statues poked incongruously out of the desert sand.

Cristina missed her mother’s rose garden with a sudden intensity. The scent of the flowers, sweeter than desert sage; her mother walking between the orderly rows. Cristina used to joke that her mother must have a warlock’s help in keeping the flowers blooming even during the hottest summer.

She moved farther away from the house, toward the rows of hollyleaf cherry and alder trees. Drawing closer to them, she saw a shadow and froze, realizing she had brought no weapons with her. Stupid, she thought—the desert was full of dangers, not all of them supernatural. Mountain lions didn’t distinguish between mundanes and Nephilim.

It wasn’t a mountain lion. The shadow moved closer; she tensed, then relaxed. It was Mark.

The moonlight turned his hair silvery white. His feet were bare under the hems of his jeans. Astonishment crossed his face as he saw her; then he walked up to her without hesitation and put a hand on her cheek.

“Am I imagining you?” he said. “I was thinking about you, and now here you are.”

It was such a Mark thing to say, a frank statement of his emotions. Because faeries couldn’t lie, she thought, and he had grown up around them, and learned how to speak of love and loving with Kieran, who was proud and arrogant but always truthful. Faeries did not associate truth with weakness and vulnerability, as humans did.

It made Cristina feel braver. “I was thinking about you, too.”

Mark feathered his thumb across her cheekbone. His palm was warm on her skin, cradling her head. “What about me?”

“The look on your face when Zara and her friends were talking about Downworlders during dinner. Your pain . . .”

He laughed without humor. “I should have expected it. Had I been an active Shadowhunter for the past five years, I would doubtless be more used to such talk.”

“Because of the Cold Peace?”

He nodded. “When a decision like that is made by a government, it emboldens those who are already prejudiced to speak their deepest thoughts of hate. They assume they are simply brave enough to say what everyone really thinks.”

“Mark—”

“In Zara’s mind, I am hated,” said Mark. His eyes were shadowed. “I am sure her father is part of that group that demands Helen remain prisoned on Wrangel Island.”

“She will come back,” Cristina said. “Now that you have come home, and fought so loyally for Shadowhunters, surely they will let her go.”

Mark shook his head, but all he said was: “I am sorry about Diego.”

She reached up and put her hand over his, his fingers light and cool as willow branches. She wanted to touch him more, abruptly, wanted to test the feel of his skin under his shirt, the texture of his jawline, where he had clearly never shaved and never needed to. “No,” she said. “You’re not, not really. Are you?”

“Cristina,” Mark breathed, a little helplessly. “Can I . . . ?”

Cristina shook her head—if she actually let him ask, she’d never be able to say no. “We can’t,” she said. “Emma.”

“You know that’s not real,” Mark said. “I love Emma, but not like that.”

“But it’s important, what she’s doing.” She drew away from Mark. “Julian has to believe it.”

He looked at her in puzzlement and she remembered: Mark didn’t know. Not about the curse, not that Julian loved Emma, or that Emma loved him.

“Everyone has to believe it. And besides,” she added hastily, “there’s Kieran. You only just ended things with him. And I just ended things with Diego.”

He only looked more puzzled. She supposed faeries had never adopted the human ideas of giving each other space and having time to get over relationships.

And maybe they were stupid ideas. Maybe love was love and you should take it when you found it. Certainly her body was screaming at her mind to shut up: She wanted to put her arms around Mark, wanted to hold him as he held her, feel his chest against hers as his expanded with breath.

Something echoed out in the darkness. It sounded like the snap of an enormous branch, followed by a slow, dragging noise. Cristina whirled, reaching for her balisong. But it was inside, on her nightstand.

“Do you think it’s the Centurions’ night patrol?” she whispered to Mark.

He was looking out into the darkness too, narrow-eyed. “No. That was not a human noise.” He took out two seraph blades and pressed one into her hand. “Nor was it an animal.”

The weight of the blade in Cristina’s hand was familiar and comforting. After a moment’s pause to apply a Night Vision rune, she followed Mark into the desert shadows.

*

Kit opened his bedroom door a crack and peered through.

The hallway was deserted. No Ty sitting outside his door, reading or lying on the floor with headphones on. No lights seeping from underneath other doors. Just the dim glow of the rows of white lights that ran across the ceiling.

He half-expected alarms to go off as he crept through the silent house and opened the front door of the Institute, some kind of shrieking whistle or burst of lights. But there was nothing—just the sound of an ordinary heavy door creaking open and shut behind him.

He was outside, on the porch above the steps that led toward the trampled grass in front of the Institute, and then the road to the highway. The view over the cliff and down to the sea was bathed in moonlight, silver and black, a white path slashing across the water.

It was beautiful here, Kit thought, slinging his duffel bag over his shoulder. But not beautiful enough to stay. You couldn’t trade a beach view for freedom.

He started down the stairs. His foot hit the first step and went out from under him as he was yanked backward. His duffel bag went flying. A hand was gripping his shoulder, hard; Kit wrenched himself sideways, nearly falling down the steps, and flung out his arm, colliding with something solid. He heard a muffled grunt—there was a barely visible figure, just a shadow among the shadows, looming over him, blocking the moon.