Lord of Shadows
Page 12

“What about ‘zounds’?”
“The punishment for ‘zounds’ is severe,” she told him. “You’ll have to run naked into the ocean in front of the Centurions.”
Mark looked puzzled. “And then?”
She sighed. “Sorry, I forgot. Most of us mind being naked in front of strangers. Take my word for it.”
“Really? You’ve never swum naked in the ocean?”
“That’s kind of a different question, but no, I never have.” She leaned back beside him.
“We should one day,” he said. “All of us.”
“I can’t imagine Perfect Diego ripping off all his clothes and leaping into the water in front of us. Maybe just in front of Cristina. Maybe.”
Mark clambered off the bed and onto the pile of blankets she’d put on the floor for him. “I doubt it. I bet he swims with all his clothes on. Otherwise he’d have to take off his Centurion pin.”
She laughed and he gave her an answering smile, though he looked tired. She sympathized. It wasn’t the normal activities of Shadowhunting that were tiring her out. It was the pretense. Perhaps it made sense that she and Mark could only unwind at night around each other, since there was no one, then, to pretend for.
They were the only times she had relaxed since the day Jem had told her about the parabatai curse, how parabatai who fell in love would go insane and destroy themselves and everyone they loved.
She’d known immediately: She couldn’t let that happen. Not to Julian. Not to his family, who she loved too. She couldn’t have stopped herself loving Julian. It was impossible. So she had to make Julian not love her.
Julian had given her the key himself, only days before. Words, whispered against her skin in a rare moment of vulnerability: He was jealous of Mark. Jealous that Mark could talk to her, flirt with her, easily, while Julian always had to hide what he felt.
Mark was leaning against the footboard beside her now, his eyes half-closed. Crescents of color under his lids, his eyelashes a shade darker than his hair. She remembered asking him to come to her room. I need you to pretend with me that we’re dating. That we’re falling in love.
He’d held out his hand to her, and she’d seen the storm in his eyes. The fierceness that reminded her that Faerie was more than green grass and revels. That it was callous wild cruelty, tears and blood, lightning that slashed the night sky like a knife.
Why lie? he’d asked.
She’d thought for a moment he’d been asking her, Why do you want to tell this lie? But he hadn’t been. He’d been asking, Why lie when we can make it the truth, this thing between us?
She’d stood before him, aching all the way down to the floor of her soul, in all the places where she’d ripped Julian away from her as if she’d torn off a limb.
They said that men joined the Wild Hunt sometimes when they had sustained a great loss, preferring to howl out their grief to the skies than to suffer in silence in their ordinary gray lives. She remembered soaring through the sky with Mark, his arms around her waist: She had let the wind take her screams of excitement, thrilling to the freedom of the sky where there was no pain, no worry, only forgetfulness.
And here was Mark, beautiful in that way that the night sky was beautiful, offering her that same freedom with an outstretched hand. What if I could love Mark? she thought. What if I could make this lie true?
Then it would be no lie. If she could love Mark, it would end all the danger. Julian would be safe.
She had nodded. Reached her hand out to Mark’s.
She let herself remember that night in her room, the look in his eyes when he’d asked her, Why lie? She remembered his warm clasp, his fingers circling her wrist. How they had nearly stumbled in their haste to get nearer to each other, colliding almost awkwardly, as if they’d been dancing and had missed a step. She had clasped Mark by the shoulders and stretched up to kiss him.
He was wiry from the Hunt, not as muscled as Julian, the bones of his clavicle and shoulders sharp under her hands. But his skin was smooth where she pushed her hands down the neck of his shirt, stroking the top of his spine. And his mouth was warm on hers.
He tasted bittersweet and felt hot, as if he had a fever. She instinctively moved closer to him; she hadn’t realized she was shivering, but she was. His mouth opened over hers; he explored her lips with his, sending slow waves of heat through her body. He kissed the corner of her mouth, brushed his lips against her jaw, her cheek.
He drew back. “Em,” he said, looking puzzled. “You taste of salt.”
She drew her right hand back from its clasp around his neck. Touched her face. It was wet. She’d been crying.
He frowned. “I don’t understand. You want the world to believe we are a couple, and yet you are weeping as if I have hurt you. Have I hurt you? Julian will never forgive me.”
The mention of Julian’s name almost undid her. She sank down at the foot of her bed, gripping her knees. “Julian has so much to cope with,” she said. “I can’t have him worrying about me. About my relationship with Cameron.”
Silently, she apologized to Cameron Ashdown, who really hadn’t done anything wrong.
“It’s not a good relationship,” she said. “Not healthy. But every time it ends, I fall back into it again. I need to break that pattern. And I need Julian not to be anxious about it. There’s already too much—the Clave will be investigating the fallout from Malcolm’s death, our involvement with the Court—”
“Hush,” he said, sitting down next to her. “I understand.”
He reached up and pulled the blanket down from her bed. Emma watched him in surprise as he wrapped it around the two of them, tucking it around both their shoulders.
She thought of the Wild Hunt then, the way he must have been with Kieran, huddling in shelters, wrapping themselves in their cloaks to block the cold.
He traced the line of her cheekbone with his fingers, but it was a friendly gesture. The heat that had been in their kiss was gone. And Emma was glad. It had seemed wrong to feel that, even the shadow of it, with anyone but Julian. “Those who are not faeries find comfort in lies,” he said. “I cannot judge that. I will do this with you, Emma. I will not abandon you.”
She leaned against his shoulder. Relief made her feel light.
“You must tell Cristina, though,” he added. “She is your best friend; you cannot hide so much from her.”
Emma nodded. She had always planned to tell Cristina. Cristina was the only one who knew about her feelings for Julian, and she would never for a moment believe that Emma had suddenly fallen in love with Mark instead. She would have to be told for practicality’s sake, and Emma was glad.
“I can trust her completely,” she said. “Now—tell me about the Wild Hunt.”
He began to speak, weaving a story of a life lived in the clouds and in the deserted and lost places of the world. Hollow cities at the bottom of copper canyons. The shell of Oradour-sur-Glane, where he and Kieran had slept in a half-burned hayloft. Sand and the smell of the ocean in Cyprus, in an empty resort town where trees grew through the floors of abandoned grand hotels.
Slowly Emma drifted off to sleep, with Mark holding her and whispering stories. Somewhat to her surprise, he’d come back the next night—it would help make their relationship seem convincing, he’d said, but she’d seen in his eyes that he’d liked the company, just as she had.