Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices, #2)

With a look of despairing anger, Drusilla crossed the room and stepped through the Portal, still holding Tavvy. Kit watched in stunned amazement as they spun away, vanishing.

Livvy moved toward the Portal next, hand in hand with Ty. She paused in front of it, the force of the magic that pulsed through it lifting her hair. “But we can’t leave this place to Zara and the Cohort,” she protested, turning toward Diana. “We can’t let them have it—”

“Better than any of you dying,” Diana said. “Now, go.”

But it was Ty who hesitated. “Kit’s coming, right?”

Diana looked at Kit. He felt his throat hurt; he didn’t know why.

“I’m coming,” he said. He watched as Livvy and Ty stepped into the colorful void, watched as they vanished. Watched as Diana followed. Stepped up to the Portal himself, and paused there, looking at Arthur.

“Did you want to go first?” he said.

Arthur shook his head. There was an odd look on his face—odd even for Arthur. Though Arthur hadn’t been that odd tonight, Kit thought. It was as if the emergency had forced him to hold himself together in a way he normally couldn’t.

“Tell them,” he said, and the muscles in his face twitched. Behind him, the front door shook; someone was trying to open it. “Tell them—”

“You’ll be able to tell them yourself, in a minute,” said Kit. He could feel the force of the Portal pulling at him. He even thought he could hear voices through it—Ty’s voice, Livvy’s. Yet he stood where he was.

“Is something going on?” he said.

Arthur moved toward the Portal. For a moment, Kit relaxed, thinking Arthur was going to step into it beside him. Instead he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Tell Julian thank you,” Arthur said, and shoved, hard.

Kit fell into the whirling, soundless nothingness.

*

The faerie prince let fly his arrow.

Kieran moved faster than Mark would have thought possible. He swung his body around, covering Mark’s. The arrow whistled through the air, singing like a deadly bird. Mark only had time to grab for Kieran to push him away when the arrow struck, burying itself in Kieran’s back just below his shoulder blade.

He slumped against Mark’s shoulder. With his free hand, Mark pulled a dagger from his belt and threw it; the prince fell, screaming, the blade in his thigh.

Mark began to drag Kieran from the clearing. The arrows had stopped, but fire was blooming from the banners with their mark of the broken crown. They had caught fire. The gentry faeries were screaming and milling, many breaking free to run.

Still holding Kieran, Mark vanished into the forest.

*

“Emma,” Cristina whispered. The clearing was thick with noise; laughter, hoots and jeers. In the distance she could see Julian with his knife to Erec’s throat; gasps rose up as he pushed his way toward the King’s pavilion, though the King, distracted by Emma, had not yet seen.

Emma was kneeling on the ground, gripping the arm of the wounded Faerie champion. She looked up and saw Cristina, and her eyes brightened.

“Help me with my dad,” Emma said. She was tugging at her father’s arm, trying to get it looped around her neck. He lay motionless, and for a moment Cristina feared he was dead.

He pulled away from Emma and lumbered to his feet. He was a slender man, tall, and the family resemblance was clear: He had Emma’s features, the shape of her eyes. His were blank, though, their blue dulled to milkiness.

“Let me go,” he said. “Bitch Nephilim girl. Let me go. This has gone far enough.”

Cristina’s blood froze at his words. The King burst out into another round of laughter. Cristina caught at Emma, pulling her toward her. “Emma, you can’t believe everything you see here.”

“This is my father,” said Emma. Cristina was holding her wrist; she could feel the pulse pounding in Emma’s veins. Emma held her free hand out. “Dad,” she said. “Please. Come with me.”

“You are Nephilim,” said Emma’s father. Faintly, on his throat, the white scars of old Marks were visible. “If you touch me, I will drag you to the feet of my King, and he will have you killed.”

The faeries all around them were giggling, uproarious, clutching at each other, and the thought that it was Emma’s horror and confusion that was making them chuckle sent spikes of murderous rage through Cristina’s veins.

It was one thing to study faeries. One thing to read about how their emotions were not like human emotions. How the Unseelie Court faeries were raised to find pleasure in the pain of others. To wrap you in a net of words and lies and watch smiling while you choked on their tricks.

It was another thing to see it.

There was a sudden commotion. The Unseelie King ran to the opposite edge of the pavilion; he was shouting orders, the knights in sudden disarray.

Julian, Cristina thought. And yes, she could see him, Julian holding Erec in front of him, at the foot of the King’s pavilion. He had deliberately drawn the King away from Emma and Cristina.

“It will be easy enough to decide this,” Cristina said. She took her balisong from her belt and held it out to the champion. “Take this,” she said.

“Cristina, what are you doing—?” Emma said.

“It is cold iron,” said Cristina. She took another two steps toward the champion. His face was changing even as she watched, less and less like Emma’s, more and more like something else—something grotesque living under the skin. “He’s a Shadowhunter. Cold iron shouldn’t bother him.”

She moved closer—and the champion who had looked like John Carstairs changed completely. His face rippled and his body flexed and changed, his skin growing mottled and gray-green. His lips pushed outward as his eyes sprang horrifyingly wide and yellow, his hair receding to show a slick, lumpy pate.

Where Emma’s father had stood was a faerie knight with a squat body and the head of a toad. Emma stared, white-faced. Its wide mouth opened and it spoke in a croaking voice.

“At last, at last, free to slough the illusion of the disgusting Nephilim—”

It didn’t finish its sentence. Emma had seized up Cortana and lunged forward, slamming the blade into the knight’s throat.

It made a wet, squelching sound. Pus-colored blood sprayed from its wide mouth; it staggered back, but Emma followed, twisting the hilt of the knife. The stench of blood and the sound of wetly tearing flesh almost made Cristina vomit.

“Emma!” Cristina shouted. “Emma!”

Emma drew the sword back and stabbed again, and again, until Cristina grabbed her shoulders and yanked her back. The faerie knight sank to the ground, dead.

Emma was shaking, spattered with foul blood. She swayed on her feet.

“Come on.” Cristina grabbed her friend’s arm, started to pull her away from the pavilion. Just then the air exploded with a rustling, singing sound. Arrows. They were tipped with fire, lighting the clearing with an eerie, moving glow. Cristina automatically ducked, only to hear a loud clang a few inches from her head. Emma had whipped Cortana to the side and an arrow had struck the blade, crumbling instantly into pieces.

Cristina picked up her pace. “We have to get out of here—”

A flaming arrow shot by them and struck a banner dangling from the King’s pavilion. The banner caught alight in crackling flames. It illuminated the princes running from the pavilion, dropping off the edges into shadow. The King still stood before his throne, though, staring down into emptiness. Where was Jules? Where had he and Erec gone?

As they neared the edge of the clearing, the faerie woman in the bone dress loomed up in front of them. Her eyes were fish-green, without pupils, shimmering like oil in the starlight. Cristina brought her foot down hard on the faerie woman’s; her screams were drowned in the Court’s howls as Cristina elbowed her aside. She crashed into the pavilion, small bones raining down from her gown like misshapen snow.

Emma’s hand was in Cristina’s. Her fingers felt like ice. Cristina tightened her grip. “Come on,” she said, and they plunged back into the trees.

*