Lord of Shadows
Page 100

“I don’t know how to take care of them,” he said. “How do I tell them to obey rules when none of us do? We went to Faerie—a much greater breakage of the Law than a visit to the Shadow Market.”
“Maybe you should all try taking care of each other,” she said.
He smiled. “You’re awfully wise.”
“Is Kieran all right?” she said.
“Still awake, I think,” he said. “He wanders around the Institute at night. He hasn’t rested well since we came here—too much cold iron, I think. Too much city.”
The neck of his T-shirt was frayed and loose. She could see where the scars on his back started, the marks of old injuries, the memory of knives. The patchwork blanket had begun slipping down his shoulder. Almost absently, Cristina reached to pull it up.
Her hand brushed along Mark’s neck, along the bare skin where his throat met the cotton of his shirt. His skin was hot. He leaned in toward her; she could smell the pine of forests.
His face was close enough to hers that she could make out the changing colors in the irises of his eyes. The rise and fall of her own breath seemed to lift her toward him.
“Can you sleep here tonight?” he said hoarsely. “It will hurt less. For both of us.”
His inhuman eyes glittered for a moment, and she thought of what Emma had said to her, that when she looked at him sometimes, she saw wildness and freedom and the unending roads of the sky.
“I can’t,” she whispered.
“Cristina—” He rose up on his knees. It was too cloudy outside for any moonlight or starlight, but Cristina could still see him, his light hair in tangles, his eyes fixed on her.
He was too close, too tangible. She knew if he touched her, she’d crumble. She wasn’t even sure what that would mean, only that the idea of such total dissolution frightened her—and that she could see Kieran when she looked at Mark, like a shadow always beside him.
She slid off the bed. “I’m sorry, Mark,” she said, and left the room so quickly she was almost running.
* * *
“Annabel seems so sad,” Emma said. “So very sad.”
They were lying in the cottage bed, side by side. It was a lot more comfortable than beds in the Institute, which was a little ironic, considering it was Malcolm’s place. Julian guessed even murderers needed regular mattresses and didn’t actually sleep on platforms made of skulls.
“She wanted me to leave the Black Volume alone,” said Julian. He was lying on his back; they both were. Emma was in a pair of cotton pajamas she’d bought from the village shop, and Julian wore sweats and an old T-shirt. Their shoulders touched, and their feet; the bed wasn’t very wide. Not that Julian would have moved away if he could have. “She said it only brings bad things.”
“But you don’t think we should do that.”
“I don’t think we have a choice. The book probably really is better off in the Seelie Court than anywhere in our world.” He sighed. “She said she’s been talking to the piskies in the area. We’re going to have to text the others, see if they know any piskie-trapping secrets. Get hold of a piskie and find out what they know.”
“Okay.” Emma’s voice was fading, her eyes closing. Julian felt the same exhaustion tugging at him. It had been an incredibly long day. “You can send the message from my phone if you want.”
Julian hadn’t been able to plug his phone in due to not having the right adapter. Things Shadowhunters didn’t think about.
“I don’t think we should tell the others Annabel came,” said Julian. “Not yet. They’ll freak out, and I want to see what the piskies say first.”
“You have to at least tell them the Unseelie King helped Malcolm get the Black Volume,” Emma said sleepily.
“I’ll tell them he wrote about it in his diaries,” said Julian.
He waited to see if Emma would object to the lie, but she was already asleep. And Julian was nearly there. Emma was here, lying beside him, the way things were supposed to be. He realized how badly he’d slept for the past few weeks without her.
He wasn’t sure if he’d drifted off, or for how long if he had. When his eyes fluttered open, he could see the dark glow of the fire in the hearth, nearly burned down to embers. And he could feel Emma, beside him, her arm thrown across his chest.
He froze. She must have moved in her sleep. She was curled against him. He could feel her eyelashes, her soft breath, against his skin.
She murmured and turned her head against his neck. Before they climbed into bed, he’d been frightened that if he touched her, he’d feel again the same willpower-smashing desire he’d felt in the Seelie Court.
What he felt now was both better and worse. It was an overpowering and terrible tenderness. Though when awake Emma had a presence that made her seem tall and even imposing, she was small curled against him, and delicate enough to make his heart turn over with thoughts of how to keep the world from breaking something so fragile.
He wanted to hold her forever, to protect her and keep her close. He wanted to be able to write as freely about his feelings for her as Malcolm had written about his dawning love for Annabel. You took my life apart and put it back together.
She sighed softly, settling into the mattress. He wanted to trace the outline of her mouth, to draw it—it was always different, its heart shape changing with her expressions, but this expression, between sleeping and waking, half-innocent and half-knowing, caught at his soul in a new way.
Malcolm’s words echoed in his head. As if you have discovered a beach you have been visiting all your life is made not of sand but of diamonds, and they blind you with their beauty.
Diamonds might be blinding in their beauty, but they were also the hardest and sharpest gems in the world. They could cut you or grind you down, smash and slice you apart. Malcolm, deranged with love, had not thought of that. But Julian could think of nothing else.
* * *
Kit was awoken by the bang of Livvy’s door. He sat up, aware he was aching all over, as Ty strode out of her bedroom.
“You’re on the floor,” Ty said, looking at him.
Kit couldn’t deny it. He and Alec had come to Livvy’s room once they’d finished in the infirmary. Then Alec had gone off to check on the children, and it had just been Magnus, quietly sitting with Livvy, occasionally examining her to see if she was healing. And Ty, leaning against the wall, staring unblinking at his sister. It had felt like a hospital room to which Kit shouldn’t have access.
So he’d gone outside, remembering how Ty had slept in front of his own door his first days in Los Angeles, and he’d curled up on the worn carpeted floor, not expecting to get much sleep. He didn’t even remember passing out, but he must have.
He struggled up into a sitting position. “Wait—”
But Ty was walking off down the hall, as if he hadn’t heard Kit at all. After a moment, Kit scrambled to his feet and followed him.
He wasn’t entirely sure why. He barely knew Tiberius Blackthorn, he thought, as Ty turned almost blindly and started up a set of stairs. He barely knew his sister, either. And they were Shadowhunters. And Ty wanted to form some kind of detective team with him, which was a ridiculous idea. Definitely one in which he wasn’t interested at all, he told himself, as the staircase ended in a short landing in front of a worn-looking old door.