Mark closed his eyes. "I had not thought you could follow me on the moon's road."
"But we did." Julian tightened his hands on Mark's shoulders. "You're not going anywhere in Faerie, much less alone."
"It's for Kieran," Mark said simply.
"Kieran betrayed you," said Julian.
"They will kill him, Jules," said Mark. "Because of me. Kieran killed Iarlath because of me." He opened his eyes to gaze into his brother's face. "I should not have tried to leave without telling you. That was unfair of me. I knew you would try to stop me, and I knew I had little time. I will never forgive Kieran for what happened to you and Emma, but I will not leave him to death and torture, either."
"Mark, the Fair Folk aren't fond of you," said Julian. "They were forced to give you back, and they hate giving back anything they take. If you go into Faerie, they'll keep you there if they can, and it won't be easy, and they will hurt you. I won't let that happen."
"Then you will be my jailer, brother?" Mark held out his hands, palms up. "You will bind my wrists in cold iron, my ankles with thorns?"
Julian flinched. It was too dark to see Mark's Blackthorn features, his blue-green eye, and in the dimness the brothers seemed only a Shadowhunter and a faerie, eternally at odds. "Emma," Julian said, removing his hands from Mark's shoulders. There was a desperate bitterness in his voice. "Mark loves you. You convince him."
Emma felt Julian's bitterness like thorns under her skin, and heard Mark's anguished words again: Will you be my jailer? "We aren't going to stop you from going. We're going to go with you."
Even in the moonlight, she could see Mark's face lose color. "No. You're obviously Nephilim. You're in gear. Your runes aren't hidden. Shadowhunters are not well-loved in the Land Under the Hill."
"Apparently only Kieran is," said Julian. "He's lucky to have your loyalty, Mark, since we don't."
At that, Mark flushed and turned toward his brother, his eyes glittering angrily. "All right, stop--stop," Emma said, taking a step toward them. The shimmering water bent and flexed beneath her feet. "Both of you--"
"Who walks the path of moonlight?"
A figure approached, its voice a deep boom above the waves. Julian's hand went to the hilt of the dagger at his waist. Emma's seraph blade was out; Cristina had her balisong in hand. Mark's fingers had reached for the place where the elf-bolt Kieran had given him had once rested in the hollow of his throat. It was gone now. His face tightened before relaxing into recognition.
"It's a phouka," he said under his breath. "Mostly, they're harmless."
The figure on the path before them had drawn closer. It was a tall faerie, dressed in ragged trousers held up by a belt of rope. Thin strands of gold were woven into his long dark hair and gleamed against his dark skin. His feet were bare.
He spoke, and his voice sounded like the tide at sunset. "Seek you to enter through the Gate of Lir?"
"Yes," said Mark.
Metallic gold eyes without irises or pupils passed over Mark, Cristina, Julian, and Emma. "Only one of you is fey," the phouka said. "The others are human. No--Nephilim." Thin lips curled into a smile. "That is a surprise. How many of you wish passage through the gate to the Shadow Lands?"
"All of us," said Emma. "The four."
"If the King or Queen finds you, they will kill you," said the phouka. "The Fair Folk are not friendly to the angel-blooded, not since the Cold Peace."
"I am half-faerie," said Mark. "My mother was the Lady Nerissa of the Seelie Court."
The phouka raised his eyebrows. "Her death grieved us all."
"And these are my brothers and sisters," Mark continued, pressing his advantage. "They would accompany me; I will protect them."
The phouka shrugged. "It is not my concern what befalls you in the Lands," he said. "Only that first you must pay a toll."
"No payments," said Julian, his hand tightening on his dagger hilt. "No tolls."
The phouka smiled. "Come here and speak to me a moment, in private, and then decide if you would pay my price. I will not force you."
Julian's expression darkened, but he stepped forward. Emma strained to hear what he was saying to the phouka, but the sound of wind and waves slid between them. Behind them, the air swirled and clouded: Emma thought she could see a shape in it, arched like the shape of a door.
Julian stood motionless as the phouka spoke, but Emma saw a muscle twitch in his cheek. A moment later, he unsnapped his father's watch from around his wrist and dropped it into the phouka's hand.
"One payment," said the phouka loudly, as Julian turned away. "Who would come next?"
"I will," said Cristina, and moved carefully across the path toward the phouka. Julian rejoined Mark and Emma.
"Did he threaten you?" Emma whispered. "Jules, if he threatened you--"
"He didn't," Julian said. "I wouldn't let Cristina near him if he had."
Emma turned to watch as Cristina reached up and pulled the jeweled clip from her hair. It cascaded down over her back and shoulders, blacker than the night sea. She handed the clip over and began to walk back toward them, looking dazed.
"Mark Blackthorn will go last," said the phouka. "Let the golden-haired girl come to me next."
Emma could feel the others watching her as she went toward the phouka, Julian more intensely than the rest. She thought of the painting he'd done of her, where she'd risen above the ocean with a body made of stars.
She wondered what he'd done with those paintings. If he'd thrown them all out. Were they gone, burned? Her heart ached at the thought. Such lovely work of Jules's, every brushstroke a whisper, a promise.
She reached the faerie, who stood slyly smiling as his kind did when they were amused. All around them the sea stretched, black and silver. The phouka bent his head to speak to her; the wind rushed up around them. She stood with him inside a circle of cloud. She could no longer see the others.
"If you're going to threaten me," she said, before he could speak, "understand that I will hunt you down for it, if not now, then later. And I will make you die for a long time."
The phouka laughed. His teeth were also gold, tipped in silver. "Emma Carstairs," he said. "I see you know little about phoukas. We are seducers, not bullies. When I tell you what I tell you, you will wish to go to Faerie. You will wish to give me what I ask for."
"And what do you ask for?"
"That stele," he said, pointing at the one in her belt.
Everything in Emma rebelled. The stele had been given to her by Jace, years ago in Idris, after the Dark War. It was a symbol of everything that had marked her life after the War. Clary had given her words, and she treasured them: Jace had given her a stele, and with it given a grief-stricken and frightened girl a purpose. When she touched the stele, it whispered that purpose to her: The future is yours now. Make it what you will.
"What use could a faerie have for a stele?" she asked. "You don't draw runes, and they only work for Shadowhunters."
"No use for a stele," he said. "But for the precious demon bone of the handle, quite a lot."
She shook her head. "Choose something else."
The phouka leaned in. He smelled of salt and seaweed baking in the sun. "Listen," he said. "If you enter Faerie, you will again see the face of someone you loved, who is dead."
"What?" Shock stabbed through Emma. "You're lying."
"You know I cannot lie."
Emma's mouth had gone dry.
"You must not tell the others what I told you, or it will not happen," said the phouka. "Nor can I tell you what it means. I am only a messenger--but the message is true. If you wish to look again upon one you have loved and lost, if you wish to hear their voice, you must pass through the Gate of Lir."
Emma drew the stele from her belt. A pang went through her as she handed it over. She turned away blindly from the phouka, his words ringing in her ears. She was barely aware of Mark brushing past her, the last to speak to the water faerie. Her heart was pounding too hard.
One you
have loved and lost. But there were many, so many, lost in the Dark War. Her parents--but she dared not even think of them; she would lose her ability to think, to go on. The Blackthorns' father, Andrew. Her old tutor, Katerina. Maybe--
The sound of wind and waves died down. Mark stood before the phouka in silence, his face pale: All three of the others looked stricken, and Emma burned to know what the faerie had told them. What could compel Jules, or Mark, or Cristina, to cooperate?
The phouka thrust out his hand. "Lir's Gate opens," he said. "Take it now, or flee back toward the shore; the moon's road begins to dissolve already."
There was a sound like shattering ice, melting under spring sunlight. Emma looked down: The shining path below was riven with black where the water was springing up through cracks.
Julian grabbed her hand. "We have to go," he said. Behind Mark, who stood ahead of them on the path, an archway of water had formed. It gleamed bright silver, the inside of it churning with water and motion.
With a laugh, the phouka leaped from the path with an elegant dive and slipped between the waves. Emma realized she had no idea what Mark had given him. Not that it seemed to matter now. The path between them was shattering rapidly: Now it was in pieces, like ice floes in the Arctic.
Cristina was on Emma's other side. The three of them pushed forward, leaping from one solid piece of path to another. Mark was gesturing toward them, shouting, the archway behind him solidifying. Emma could see green grass through it, moonlight and trees. She pushed Cristina forward; Mark caught her, and the two of them vanished through the gate.
She moved to take a step forward, but the path gave way under her feet. For what seemed like much more than seconds she tumbled toward the black water. Then Julian had caught her. His arms around her, they fell together through the arch.
*
The shadows had lengthened in the attic. Arthur sat motionless, gazing out the window with its torn paper at the moonlight over the sea. He could guess where Julian and the others were now: He knew the moon's road, as he knew the other roads of Faerie. He had been driven down them by hooting packs of pixies and goblins, riding ahead of their masters, the unearthly beautiful princes and princesses of the gentry. Once in a winter forest he had fallen, and his body had shattered the ice of a pond. He recalled watching his blood spray across the pond's silvered surface.
"How pretty," a faerie lady had mused, as Arthur's blood melted into the ice.
He thought of his mind that way sometimes: a shattered surface reflecting back a broken and imperfect picture. He knew his madness was not like human madness. It came and went, sometimes leaving him barely touched so he hoped it was gone forever. Then it would return, crushing him beneath a parade of people no one else could see, a chorus of voices no one else could hear.
The medicine helped, but the medicine was gone. Julian had always brought the medicine, from the time he was a small boy. Arthur wasn't sure how old he was now. Old enough. Sometimes Arthur wondered if he loved the boy. If he loved any of his brother's children. There had been times he had awoken from dreams in which terrible things had happened to them with his face wet with tears.
But that might have been guilt. He had lacked either the ability to raise them, or the bravery to let the Clave replace him with a better guardian. Though who would have kept them together? No one, perhaps, and family should be together.
The door at the foot of the stairs creaked. Arthur turned eagerly. Perhaps Julian had thought better of his mad plan and returned. The moon's road was dangerous. The sea itself was full of treachery. He had grown up near the sea, in Cornwall, and he recalled its monsters. And bitter as blood is the spray; and the crests are as fangs that devour.
Or perhaps there had never been monsters.
She appeared at the top of the steps and looked at him coolly. Her hair was pulled back so tightly her skin seemed stretched. She tilted her head, taking in the cramped, dirty room, the papered-over windows. There was something in her face, something that stirred a flicker of memory.
Something that made cold terror wash through him. He gripped the arms of his chair, his mind chattering with bits of old poetry. Her skin was white as leprosy, the nightmare Life-in-Death was she--
"Arthur Blackthorn, I presume?" she said with a demure smile. "I'm Zara Dearborn. I believe you knew my father."
*
Emma landed hard on thick grass, tangled up in Julian. For a moment he was propped over her, elbows on the ground, his pale face luminous in the moonlight. The air around them was cold, but his body was warm against hers. She felt the expansion of his chest as he inhaled a sharp breath, the current of air against her cheek as he turned his face quickly away from hers.
A moment later he was on his feet, reaching down to pull her up after him. But she scrambled upright on her own, spinning around to see that they were standing in a clearing surrounded by trees.
The moonlight was bright enough for Emma to see that the grass was intensely green, the trees hung with fruit that was vividly colored: purple plums, red apples, star-and rose-shaped fruits that Emma didn't recognize. Mark and Cristina were there too, under the trees.
Mark had pushed the sleeves of his shirt up and was holding his hands out as if he were touching the air of Faerie, feeling it on his skin. He tipped his head back, his mouth slightly open; Emma, looking at him, blushed. It felt like a private moment, as if she were watching someone reconnect with a lover.
"Emma," Cristina breathed. "Look." She pointed upward, at the sky.
The stars were different. They arched and whirled in patterns that Emma didn't recognize, and they had colors--icy blue, frost green, shimmering gold, brilliant silver.
"It's so beautiful," she whispered. She saw Julian look over at her, but it was Mark who spoke. He no longer looked quite so abandoned to the night, but he still seemed a little dazed, as if the air of Faerie were wine and he had drunk too much.
"The Hunt rode through the sky of Faerie sometimes," he said. "In the sky the stars look like the crushed dust of jewels--powdered ruby and sapphire and diamond."
"I knew about the stars in Faerie," Cristina said in an awed, quiet voice. "But I never thought I would see them myself."
"Should we rest?" Julian asked. He was prowling the outline of the clearing, peering between the trees. Trust Jules to ask the practical questions. "Gather our energy for traveling tomorrow?"
Mark shook his head. "We can't. We must travel through the night. I know only how to navigate the Lands by the stars."
"Then we're going to need Energy runes." Emma held out her arm to Cristina. It wasn't meant as a deliberate snub to Jules--runes your parabatai put on you were always more powerful--but she could still feel where his body had crashed against hers when they'd fallen. She could still feel the visceral twist inside her when his breath had ghosted against her cheek. She needed him not to be close to her right now, not to see what was in her eyes. The way Mark had looked at the sky of Faerie: that was how she imagined she looked at Julian.
Cristina's touch was warm and comforting, her stele swift and skilled, its tip tracing the shape of an Energy rune onto Emma's forearm. Finished, she let Emma's wrist go. Emma waited for the usual alert, searing heat, like a double jolt of caffeine.
Nothing happened.
"It's not working," she said, with a frown.
"Let me see--" Cristina stepped forward. She glanced down at Emma's skin, and her eyes widened. "Look."
The Mark, black as ink when Cristina had placed it on Emma's forearm, was turning pale and silvery. Fading, like melting frost. In seconds it had blended back into Emma's skin and was gone.
"What on earth . . . ?" Emma began. But Julian had already whirled on Mark. "Runes," he said. "Do they work? In Faerie?"
Mark looked astonished. "It never occurred to me that they wouldn't," he said. "No one's ever mentioned it."
"I've studied Faerie for years," Cristina said. "I've never seen it said anywhere that runes do not work in the Lands."<
br />
"When was the last time you tried to use one here?" Emma asked Mark.
He shook his head, blond curls falling into his eyes. He shoved them back with narrow fingers. "I can't remember," he said. "I didn't have a stele--they broke it--but my witchlight always worked--" He dug into his pocket and drew out a round, polished rune-stone. They all watched, breathless, as he held it up, waiting for the light to come, to shine brilliantly from his palm.
Nothing happened.
With a soft curse, Julian drew one of his seraph blades from his belt. The adamas gleamed dully in the moonlight. He turned it so that the blade lay flat, reflecting the multicolored brilliance of the stars. "Michael," he said.
Something sparked inside the blade--a brief, dull gleam. Then it was gone. Julian stared at it. A seraph blade that could not be brought to life was barely more use than a plastic knife: dull-bladed, heavy, and short.
With a violent jerk of his arm, Julian cast the blade aside. It skidded across the grass. He raised his eyes. Emma could sense how tightly he was holding back. She felt it like a pressure in her own body that made it hard to breathe.
"So," he said. "We're going to have to journey across Faerie, a place where Shadowhunters aren't welcome, using only the stars to navigate, and we can't use runes, seraph blades, or witchlight. Is that the situation, roughly?"
"I would say it's the situation exactly," said Mark.
"Also, we're heading for the Unseelie Court," Emma added. "Which is supposed to be like one of those horror movies Dru likes, but less, you know, fun."
"Then we will travel at night," Cristina said. She pointed into the distance. "There are landmarks that I've seen on maps. Do you see those ridges in the distance, against the sky? I think that those are the Thorn Mountains. The Unseelie Lands lie in their shadow. It is not so far away."
Emma could see Mark relax at the sound of Cristina's sensible voice. It didn't seem to be working on Julian, though. His jaw was clenched, his hands rigid fists at his sides.
It wasn't that Julian didn't get angry. It was that he didn't let himself show it. People thought he was quiet, calm, but that was deceptive. Emma recalled something she had read once: that volcanoes had the lushest green slopes, the loveliest and quietest aspect, because the fire that pulsed through them kept their earth from ever freezing.
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