Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices, #2)

“Have you gotten a chance to talk to Mark at all about, you know, the kiss?” asked Emma as they passed an Upper Crust bakery that smelled like butter and cinnamon, mixed with the smoke of the station. “Especially with the whole Kieran thing going on now.”

Cristina shook her head. She looked drawn and pale, as if she hadn’t slept well. “Kieran and Mark have history. Like Diego and me. I can’t find fault with Mark for being drawn to his history. It was the reason I was drawn to Diego, and I did that without all the pressures that are on Mark now.”

“I don’t know how it’ll play out. Mark’s not much of a liar,” said Emma. “I say this as someone who isn’t great at it myself.”

Cristina gave a pained smile. “You are terrible. Watching you and Mark pretend to be in love was like watching two people who kept falling over and then hoping nobody noticed.”

Emma giggled. “Very flattering.”

“I am only saying that for the good of us all, Kieran must believe in Mark’s feelings,” said Cristina. “A faerie who thinks they have been scorned or spited can be very cruel.”

She gasped suddenly, bending almost double. Emma caught her as she sank down. In a blind panic, she dragged Cristina into a corner between two shops. She didn’t dare scream; she wasn’t glamoured, mundanes would hear her. But she glanced toward Julian and Bridget, still deep in conversation, and thought as hard as she could.

Jules, Julian, I need you, right now, come right now, please!

“Emma—” Cristina had her arms crossed, hugging her stomach as if it pained her, but it was the blood on her shirt that terrified Emma.

“Cristina—sweetheart—let me see, let me see.” She pulled frantically at Cristina’s arms until the other girl let go.

There was blood on her right hand and sleeve. Most of it seemed to be coming from her arm and to have transferred itself to her shirt. Emma breathed a little easier. A wound to the arm was less serious than one to the body.

“What’s going on?” It was Julian’s voice. He and Bridget had reached them; Jules was white-faced. She saw the terror in his eyes and realized what had caused it: He’d thought something had happened to Emma.

“I’m all right,” Emma said mechanically, shocked by the look on his face.

“Of course you are,” said Bridget impatiently. “Let me get to the girl. Stop clinging to her, for goodness’ sake.”

Emma detached herself and watched as Bridget knelt and peeled Cristina’s sleeve back. Cristina’s wrist was banded with a bracelet of blood, her skin puffy. It was as if someone was tightening an invisible wire around her arm, cutting into the flesh.

“What are you two just sitting there for?” Bridget demanded. “Put a healing rune on the girl.”

They both reached for steles; Julian got to his first and drew a quick iratze on Cristina’s skin. Emma leaned forward, holding her breath.

Nothing happened. If anything, the skin around the bleeding circle seemed to swell more. A fresh gush of blood welled up, spattering Bridget’s clothes. Emma wished she still had her old stele; she’d always superstitiously believed she could draw stronger runes with it. But it was in faerie hands now.

Cristina didn’t whimper. She was a Shadowhunter, after all. But her voice shook. “I don’t think an iratze will help this.”

Emma shook her head. “What is it—?”

“It looks like a faerie charm,” said Bridget. “While you were in the Lands, did any fey seem to cast a spell on you? Were your wrists ever tied?”

Cristina pushed herself up on her elbows. “That—I mean, that couldn’t be it . . . .”

“What happened?” Emma demanded.

“At the revel, two girls tied my wrist and Mark’s together with a ribbon,” Cristina said reluctantly. “We sliced it off, but there may have been a stronger magic there than I guessed. It could be a sort of binding spell.”

“This is the first time you’ve been away from Mark since we were in Faerie,” Julian said. “You think that’s it?”

Cristina looked grim. “The farther I go from him, the worse it becomes. Last night was almost the first time I’d left his side, and my arm burned and ached. And as we drove away from the Institute, the pain got worse and worse—I hoped it would go away, but it didn’t.”

“We need to get you back to the Institute,” said Emma. “We’ll all go. Come on.”

Cristina shook her head. “You and Julian should still go to Cornwall,” she said, and gestured with her uninjured hand overhead, toward the board on which the schedules for the trains were posted. The train for Penzance left in less than five minutes. “You need to. This is necessary.”

“We could wait a day,” Emma protested.

“This is faerie magic,” said Cristina, letting Bridget help her to her feet. “There’s no assurance it will be fixed in a day.”

Emma hesitated. She hated the thought of leaving Cristina.

Bridget spoke in a sharp voice, surprising them all. “Go,” she said. “You are parabatai, the most powerful team the Nephilim can offer. I have seen what parabatai can do. Stop hesitating.”

“She’s right,” Julian said. He shoved his stele back into his belt. “Come on, Emma.”

A blur followed, of Emma hugging Cristina hurriedly good-bye, Julian catching at her hand, drawing her away, of the two of them running haphazardly through the train station, nearly knocking over the ticket barriers, and flinging themselves into the empty coach of a Western Railway train just as it pulled out of the station with a loud screeching of released brakes.

*

With every mile she and Bridget covered that brought them closer to the Institute, Cristina’s pain faded. At Paddington, her arm had screamed with agonizing pain. Now it was a dull ache that seemed to push down into her bones.

I have lost something, the ache seemed to whisper. There is something I am missing. In Spanish, she might have said, Me haces falta. She had noticed early on when she learned English that a direct translation of that phrase didn’t really exist: English speakers said I need you, where me haces falta meant something closer to, You are lacking to me. That was what she felt now, a lack like a missing chord in a song or a missing word on a page.

They pulled up in front of the Institute with a squeal of brakes. Cristina heard Bridget call her name, but she was already out of the car, cradling her wrist as she ran toward the front steps. She couldn’t help herself. Her mind revolted at the thought of being controlled by something outside herself, but it was as if her body was dragging her along, pushing her toward what it needed to make itself whole.

The front doors banged open. It was Mark.

There was blood on his arm, too, soaking through the light blue sleeve of his sweater. Behind him was a chatter of voices, but he was only looking at Cristina. His light hair was disarrayed, his blue and gold eyes burning like banners.

Cristina thought she had never seen anything so beautiful.

He ran down the steps—he was barefoot—and caught at her hand, pulling her against him. The moment their bodies slammed together, Cristina felt the ache inside her vanish.

“It’s a binding spell,” Mark whispered into her hair. “Some kind of binding spell, tying us together.”

“The girls at the revel—one tied our wrists together and the other laughed—”

“I know.” He brushed his lips across her forehead. She could feel his heart pounding. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll fix it.”

She nodded and closed her eyes, but not before she saw that several others had spilled out onto the front step and were staring at them. In the center of the group was Kieran, his elegant face pale and set, his eyes unreadable.

*

The tickets they had bought were first class, so Emma and Julian had a compartment to themselves. The gray-brown of the city had been left behind, and they were rolling through green fields, studded with wildflowers and copses of green trees. Charcoal stone farmers’ walls ran up and down the hills, dividing the land into puzzle pieces.