Mark hesitated, and Simon found himself doubting. Kieran was right, after all. Mark Blackthorn owed the Shadowhunters nothing.
“Mark,” Kieran said, a thread of steel in his voice. “You know there are those in the Hunt who would seize any reason to punish you.”
Simon could not tell if Kieran’s words were a warning or a threat.
A smile crossed Mark’s face, dark as a shadow. “Better than you,” he said. “But I thank you for your care. I will go with you and explain myself to Gwyn.” He turned to look at Simon, his bicolored eyes unreadable, sea glass and bronze. “I will come back. Do not harm him,” he told Hefeydd. “Give him water.”
He nodded toward Hefeydd, slight emphasis in the gesture, and nodded toward Simon. Simon nodded in return.
Kieran, whom Hefeydd had called a prince, kept his grip on Mark and turned him so that he was facing away from Simon. He whispered something to Mark that Simon could not hear, and Simon could not tell if the tight grasp of Kieran’s hand was affection, anxiety, or a wish to imprison.
Simon had no doubt that if Kieran had his way, Mark would not come back.
Mark whistled, and Kieran made the same sound. On the wind, as a shadow and a cloud, came a dark and a light horse swooping down for their riders. Mark leaped into the air and was gone in a flicker of darkness, with a cry of joy and challenge.
Hefeydd chuckled, the low sound creeping through the undergrowth.
“Oh, I will give you water with pleasure,” he said, and came over with a cup fashioned out of bark, filled to the brim with water that seemed to shine with light.
Simon reached out through the bars and accepted the drink, but fumbled it and spilled half the water. Hefeydd cursed and caught the cup, holding it to Simon’s lips and smiling a darkly encouraging smile.
“There is still some left,” he whispered. “You can drink. Drink.”
Except Simon was Academy trained. He had no intention of accepting food or drink from faeries, and he was sure Mark had not meant him to. Mark had been nodding at the key dangling from one of the long sleeves of Hefeydd’s cloak.
Simon pretended to drink as Hefeydd smiled. He slipped the key into his gear, and when Hefeydd trotted away he waited, and counted the minutes until he thought the coast was clear. He slid his hand through the bars, slipped the key into the lock, and swung the cage door slowly open.
Then he heard a sound, and froze.
Stepping out of the whispering green trees, wearing a red velvet jacket and a long black lace dress that turned into transparent cobwebs around the knees, in boots and red gloves that Simon thought he might remember, graceful as a gazelle and intent as a tiger, was Isabelle Lightwood.
“Simon!” she exclaimed. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Simon drank her in with his eyes, better than water from any land. She had come for him. The others must have fled back to the Academy and said that Simon was lost in Faerie, and Isabelle had gone charging into Faerieland to find him. First out of anybody, when she was meant to be getting ready to attend a wedding. But she was Isabelle, and that meant she was always ready to fight and defend.
Simon recalled feeling conflicted when she had rescued him from a vampire last year. Right now he could not imagine why.
He knew her better now, he thought, knew her all over again, and knew why she would always come.
“Er, I was escaping my terrible captivity,” said Simon. Then he took a step back from the cage door, met Isabelle’s eyes, and grinned. “But, you know . . . not if you don’t want me to.”
Isabelle’s eyes, which had been hard with worry and purpose, were suddenly glittering like jet.
“What are you saying, Simon?”
Simon spread his hands. “I’m just saying, if you came all the way here to rescue me, I don’t wish to appear ungrateful.”
“Oh no?”
“No, I’m the grateful type,” Simon said firmly. “So here I am, humbly awaiting rescue. I hope you can see your way clear to saving me.”
“I think I could possibly be persuaded,” Isabelle said. “Given an incentive.”
“Oh, please,” Simon said. “I languished in prison, praying that someone brave and strong and babelicious would swoop in and save me. Save me!”
“Brave and strong and babelicious? You don’t ask for much, Lewis.”
“That’s what I need,” Simon said, with growing conviction. “I need a hero. I’m holding out for a hero, in fact, until the morning light. And she’s gotta be sure, and it’s gotta be soon—because I have been kidnapped by evil faeries—and she’s gotta be larger than life.”
Isabelle did look larger than life, like a girl on a big screen with her lip gloss glittering like starlight and music playing to accompany every swish of her hair.
She opened the cage door and stepped inside, twigs crackling under her boots, and crossed the floor of the cage to slide her arms around Simon’s neck. Simon drew her face to his and kissed her lips. He felt the luxurious give of her ruby mouth, the slide of her tall strong beautiful body against his. Isabelle’s kiss was like rich wine laid out for him alone, like a challenge offered and a promise kept.
He felt, curving against his mouth, her smile.
“Why, Lord Montgomery,” Isabelle murmured. “It’s been such a long time. I was worried I’d never see you again.”
Simon wished he had braved the showers in the Academy this morning. What did dead rats matter, in the face of true love?
There was a rush of blood in his ears, and the sound of a tiny creak: the cage door swinging shut again.
Simon and Isabelle pulled abruptly apart. Isabelle looked ready to spring, like a tiger in lace. Hefeydd did not look particularly worried.
“Two Shadowhunters for the price of one, and a new bird for my cage,” Hefeydd said. “And such a pretty bird.”
“You think your cage can hold this bird?” Isabelle demanded. “You’re dreaming. I got in, and I can get out.”
“Not without your stele and your bag of tricks,” Hefeydd said. “Throw them all through the bars of the cage, or I shoot your lover with elfshot and you watch him die before your eyes.”
Isabelle looked at Simon and, stone-faced, began to strip off her weapons and shove them through the cage bars. Simon was now, perhaps unsettlingly, aware of the placement of many of Isabelle’s weapons, and he noted that she had skipped the knife on the inside of her left boot. Oh, and the long knife in the sheath at her back.
Isabelle had many, many knives.
“It will not be so long until you need water to live, pretty bird,” said Hefeydd. “I can wait.”
He shimmered away. Isabelle collapsed at the bottom of the cage as if her strings had been cut.
Simon stared at her in horror. “Isabelle—”
“I am so humiliated,” said Isabelle, her face in her hands. “I didn’t even hear him coming. I have brought shame upon the Lightwood name. Utter shame. Total, total humiliation.”