Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices, #2)

Mark didn’t dare go far. Julian, Emma, and Cristina were still in the Court. He pulled Kieran behind a thick oak tree and drew him down to sit leaning against it.

“Are you all right? Are you in pain?” Mark demanded.

Kieran looked at him with clear exasperation. Before Mark could stop him, he reached back, grasped the arrow, and yanked it out. Blood came with it, a welter that soaked the back of his shirt.

“Christ, Kieran, what the hell—”

“What foreign gods do you call on now?” Kieran demanded. “I thought you said I wasn’t dying.”

“You weren’t.” Mark pulled off his linen vest, wadding up the material to press it to Kieran’s back. “Except now I might kill you for being so stupid.”

“Hunters heal fast,” said Kieran with a gasp. “Mark. It really is you.” His eyes were luminous. “I knew you would come for me.”

Mark said nothing. He was concentrating on holding the cloth against Kieran’s wound, but a sense of anxiety pressed against the inside of his rib cage. He and Kieran had hardly ended things on good terms. Why would Kieran think Mark would come for him, when Mark very nearly hadn’t?

“Kier,” he said. He moved the vest away; Kieran was right about the healing. The blood had slowed to a sluggish trickle. Mark dropped the blood-wet linen and touched the side of Kieran’s face. It was furnace hot. “You’re burning up.” He reached up to sling the elf-bolt necklace back around Kieran’s throat, but the other boy stopped him.

“Why do I have your necklace?” he said, frowning. “It should be yours.”

“I gave it back to you,” Mark said.

Kieran gave a hoarse laugh. “I would remember that.” His eyes went wide then. “I don’t remember killing Iarlath,” he said. “I know that I did. They told me that much. And I believe it; he was a bastard. But I don’t remember it. I don’t remember anything after I saw you through the window of the Institute, in the kitchen, talking to that girl. Cristina.”

Mark went cold all over. Automatically, he slung the elf-bolt necklace over his head, feeling it thump against his chest. Kieran didn’t remember?

That meant he didn’t remember betraying Mark, telling the Wild Hunt that Mark had shared faerie secrets with Nephilim. He didn’t remember the punishment, the whippings Julian and Emma had borne.

He didn’t remember that Mark had broken things off between them. Given him his necklace back.

No wonder he’d thought Mark would come for him.

“That girl Cristina is right here,” said a voice above them. Cristina had joined them in the shadows. She looked disheveled, though not nearly as much as Emma, who was splattered with faerie blood and bleeding from a long scratch on her cheek. Mark sprang up.

“What’s going on? Are either of you hurt?”

“I—I think we’re all right,” Emma said. She sounded bewildered and worryingly blank.

“Emma killed the King’s champion,” said Cristina, and then closed her mouth. Mark sensed there was more to it, but didn’t press.

Emma blinked, slowly focusing on Mark and Kieran. “Oh, it’s you,” she said to Kieran, sounding more like her old self. “Weasel Face. Committed any acts of monstrous personal betrayal lately?”

Kieran looked stunned. People didn’t usually talk to Unseelie princes that way, and besides, Mark thought, Kieran no longer remembered why Emma might be angry with him or accuse him of betrayal. “You brought her here with you to rescue me?” he said to Mark.

“We all came to rescue you.” It was Julian, only partly visible behind Erec, who he was shoving ahead of him. Emma exhaled, an audible sound of relief. Julian looked over at her quickly, and they shared a glance. It was what Mark had always thought of as the parabatai glance: the quick once-over to make sure the other person was all right, that they were beside you, safe and living. Though now that he knew of Julian’s true feelings for Emma, he couldn’t help but wonder if there was a layer more to what they shared.

Erec’s throat was bleeding where the dagger had likely slipped; he was glaring out from beneath black brows, his face contorted into a snarl.

“Blood traitor,” he said to Kieran. He spat past the knife. “Kin-slayer.”

“Iarlath was no kin of mine,” said Kieran, in an exhausted voice.

“He was more your kin than these monsters,” said Erec, glaring around at the Shadowhunters surrounding him. “Even now, you betray us for them.”

“As you betrayed me to the King our father?” said Kieran. He was huddled among the tree roots, looking surprisingly small, but when he tipped his face back to look at Erec, his eyes were hard as gems. “You think I do not know who told the King I killed Iarlath? You think I do not know at whose feet I can lay the blame for my exile to the Hunt?”

“Arrogant,” said Erec. “You have always been arrogant, whelp, thinking you belonged in the Court with the rest of us. I am the King’s favorite, not you. You earned no special place in his heart or the hearts of the Court.”

“Yet they liked me better,” Kieran said quietly. “Before—”

“Enough,” Julian said. “The Court is on fire. Knights will be coming after us as soon as the chaos dies down. It’s madness to stay here and gossip.”

“Important Court business is not gossip,” snarled Erec.

“It is to me.” Julian peered through the woods. “There must be a quick way out of here, toward Seelie Lands. Can you lead us?”

Erec was silent.

“He can,” said Kieran, rising unsteadily to his feet. “He can’t lie and say it’s not possible; that’s why he’s not talking.”

Emma raised an eyebrow at Kieran. “Weasel Face, you’re surprisingly helpful when you want to be.”

“I wish you would not be so familiar,” Kieran said disapprovingly.

Erec made a grunting noise—Julian was digging the knife into his neck. There was a slight tremble to Julian’s hand, his grip on the blade. Mark imagined it must be a physical strain to keep Erec contained, but he suspected there was more to it than that. Julian did not have a torturer’s nature, for all that he could and would be ruthless in protecting those he loved.

“I will kill you if you don’t take us in the right direction,” he said now. “I will do it slowly.”

“You promised my father—”

“I am not a faerie,” said Julian. “I can lie.”

Erec looked darkly furious, in a way that alarmed Mark. Faeries could hold grudges for a very long time. He began to walk, though, and the others followed him, leaving behind the orange light glowing from the clearing.

They headed into the dark fastness of the forest. The trees grew close together, and there were thick roots snaking up through the dark soil. Clusters of flowers in deep colors, blood-reds and poison-greens, clustered around the low boughs of the trees. They passed a giggling tree faerie who sat in the fork of a branch, naked except for an elaborate net of silvery wires, and winked at Mark as he went by. Kieran was leaning heavily against his shoulder; Mark kept a hand splayed in the small of Kieran’s back. Were the others puzzled or wondering what was going on between them? He saw Cristina glance back toward him, but couldn’t read her expression.

Emma and Cristina walked close together. Julian was in front, letting Erec guide them. Mark still felt uneasiness. It seemed as if they had gotten away too easily. For the King of the Unseelie Court to have let them go, and to have them take his favorite son . . .

“Where are the others?” Erec asked as the trees thinned out and the sky, multicolored in all its glory, became visible. “Your friends?”

“Friends?” Mark said, in a puzzled tone.

“The archers,” said Erec. “Those flaming arrows in the Court—clever, I’ll grant you. We wondered how you would cope with weapons once we took your angel powers away.”

“How did you do that?” Mark asked. “Did you unhallow all this land?”

“That wouldn’t make a difference,” said Emma. “Runes work even in demon realms. This is something stranger.”

“And the blight,” said Mark. “What is the meaning of the blighted land? It is everywhere in the Unseelie Lands, like cancer in a sick body.”