Lady Midnight
Page 43

Julian came no closer. He was remembering what Jace Herondale and Clary Fairchild had told him and his sister, their meeting with Mark years ago under the faerie hills, his broken eyes and the whip marks on his body.
Mark was strong, he had told himself in the dead darkness of the thousand nights afterward. He could endure it. Julian had thought about only torture of the body. He had not thought about torture of the mind.
“And Julian,” Mark said. “He is too strong to break. You try to break him on the wheel, and tear him with thorns and blades, but even then he won’t give up. So you bring to him Emma, for the wishes of our hearts are knives to you.”
That was too much for Julian. He lurched forward, grabbing hold of one of the posts of the bed to steady himself.
“Mark,” he said. “Mark Antony Blackthorn. Please. It’s not a dream. You’re really here. You’re home.”
He reached for Mark’s hand. Mark whipped it back, away from him. “You are lying smoke.”
“I’m your brother.”
“I have no brothers and sisters, no family. I am alone. I ride with the Wild Hunt. I am loyal to Gwyn the Hunter.” Mark recited the words as if by rote.
“I’m not Gwyn,” said Julian. “I’m a Blackthorn. I have Blackthorn blood in me, just like you.”
“You are a phantom and a shadow. You are the cruelty of hope.” Mark turned his face away. “Why do you punish me? I have done nothing to displease the Hunt.”
“There’s no punishment here.” Julian took a step closer to Mark. Mark didn’t move, but his body trembled. “This is home. I can prove it to you.”
He glanced back over his shoulder. Cristina was standing very still against the wall, and he could see that the gleam in her hand was a knife. Clearly she was waiting to see if Mark would attack him. Julian wondered why she had been willing to stay in the room with Mark alone; hadn’t she been afraid?
“There is no proof,” Mark whispered. “Not when you can weave any illusion before my eyes.”
“I’m your brother,” Julian repeated. “And to prove it to you, I’ll tell you something only your brother would know.”
At that Mark raised his eyes. Something flickered in them, like a light shining on distant water.
“I remember the day you were taken,” Julian said.
Mark recoiled. “Any of the Folk would know about that—”
“We were up in the training room. We heard noises, and you went downstairs. But before you went you said something to me. Do you remember?”
Mark stood very still.
“You said, ‘Stay with Emma,’” Julian said. “You said to stay with her, and I have. We’re parabatai now. I’ve looked after her for years and I always will, because you asked me to, because it was the last thing you ever said to me, because—”
He remembered, then, that Cristina was there, and cut himself off abruptly. Mark was staring at him, silent. Julian felt despair well up inside him. Maybe this was a trick of the faeries; maybe they had given Mark back, but so broken and hollowed out that he wasn’t Mark anymore. Maybe—
Mark nearly fell forward, and threw his arms around Julian.
Julian barely managed to catch himself before almost falling over. Mark was whipcord thin, but strong, his hands fisting in Julian’s shirt. Julian could feel Mark’s heart hammering, feel the sharp bones under his skin. He smelled like earth and mildew and grass and nighttime air.
“Julian,” Mark said, muffled, his body shaking. “Julian, my brother, my brother.”
Somewhere in the distance, Julian heard the click of the bedroom door as it shut; Cristina had left them alone together.
Julian sighed. He wanted to relax into his older brother, let Mark hold him up the way he once had. But Mark was slighter than he was, fragile under his hands. He would be holding Mark up from now on. It was not what he had imagined, dreamed of, but it was the reality. It was his brother. He tightened his hands on Mark and adjusted his heart to bear the new burden.
The library in the Los Angeles Institute was small—nothing like the famous libraries of New York and London, but well-known regardless for its surprisingly large collection of books in Greek and Latin. They had more books on the magic and occultism of the classical period than the Institute in Vatican City.
Once the library had been terra-cotta tile and Mission windows; now it was a starkly modern room. The old library had been destroyed in Sebastian Morgenstern’s attack on the Institute, the books scattered among bricks and desert. Rebuilt, it was glass and steel. The floor was polished mountain ash, smooth and shining with applications of protective spells.
A spiral ramp began at the north side of the first floor and climbed the walls; the outer side of the ramp was lined with books and windows, while the inner, facing the library’s interior, was a shoulder-high railing. At the very top was an oculus—a skylight held closed with a large copper lock, made of foot-thick glass decorated all over with protective runes.
Maps were kept in a massive chest decorated with the crest of the Blackthorn family—a ring of thorns—with their family motto beneath it: Lex malla, lex nulla.
A bad law is no law.
Emma suspected that the Blackthorns hadn’t exactly always gotten along with the Council.
Drusilla was rummaging around in the map chest. Livvy and Ty were at the table with more maps, and Tavvy was playing under it with a set of plastic soldiers.
“Can you tell if Julian’s all right?” Livvy asked, propping her chin on her hand to look at Emma anxiously. “You know, how he’s feeling . . .”
Emma shook her head. “Parabatai stuff isn’t really like that. I mean, I can feel if he’s hurt, physically, but not his emotions so much.”
Livvy sighed. “It would be so great to have a parabatai.”
“I don’t really see why,” Ty said.
“Someone who always has your back,” said Livvy. “Someone who will always protect you.”
“I would do that for you anyway,” Ty said, pulling a map toward himself. This was an argument they’d had before; Emma had heard some variation of it half a dozen times.
“Not everyone’s cut out to have one,” she said. She wished for a moment that she had the words to explain it properly: how loving someone more than you loved yourself gave you strength and courage; how seeing yourself in your parabatai’s eyes meant seeing the best version of yourself; how, at its best, fighting alongside your parabatai was like playing instruments in harmony with one another, each piece of the music improving the other.
“Having someone who’s sworn to shield you from danger,” said Livvy, her eyes shining. “Someone who would put their hands in a fire for you.”
Briefly Emma remembered that Jem had once told her that his parabatai, Will, had thrust his hands into a fire to retrieve a packet of medicine that would save Jem’s life. Maybe she shouldn’t have repeated the story to Livvy.
“In the movies Watson throws himself in front of Sherlock when there’s gunfire,” Ty said, looking thoughtful. “That’s like parabatai.”
Livvy looked mildly outfoxed, and Emma felt for her. If Livvy said it wasn’t like parabatai, Ty would argue. If she agreed it was, he would point out you didn’t need to be parabatai to jump in front of someone when there was danger. He wasn’t wrong, but she sympathized with Livvy’s desire to be parabatai with Ty. To make sure her brother was always by her side.