"You wouldn't. It's a family alliance."
"An arranged marriage? How mundane and medieval." Manuel grabbed for the rune-stones on the table, and for a moment the light in the room seemed to dance, a wild pattern of shine and shadow. "So, are we heading back?"
"We'd better. If anyone sees us, we can say we were checking the wards." Zara crumpled the pages of her father's letter and stuffed them into her pocket. "The Council meets soon. My father will read out my letter to him there, stating Arthur Blackthorn's inability to run an Institute, and then announce his own candidacy."
"They won't know what hit them," said Manuel, sliding his hands into his pockets. "And when it's all over, of course . . ."
"Don't worry," Zara said irritably. "You'll get what you want. Though it would be better if you were more committed to the cause."
She had already turned away; Kit saw Manuel's eyes glint beneath his lashes as he looked after her. There was something in his expression--an unpleasant sort of hunger, though whether it was desire for Zara or something far more arcane, Kit couldn't tell. "Oh, I'm committed," said Manuel. "I'd like to see the world burned clean of Downworlders as much as you, Zara. I just don't believe in doing something for nothing."
Zara glanced back over her shoulder as she moved into the corridor Manuel had used as an entrance. "It won't be nothing, Manu," she said. "I can promise you that."
And they were gone, leaving Kit, Ty, and Livvy to huddle together in the mouth of the tunnel, stunned into silence.
*
The sound that woke Cristina was so faint she thought at first she might have imagined it. She lay, still tired, blinking against the foggy sunlight. She wondered how long it would be until sundown, when they could navigate by the stars again.
The sound came again, a sweet far-calling cry, and she sat up, shaking her hair back. It was wet with dew. She combed her fingers through it, wishing for something to tie it back with. She hardly ever wore her hair down like this, and the weight against her neck was bothersome.
She could see Julian and Emma, both asleep, hunched figures on the ground. But where was Mark? His blanket was discarded, his boots lying beside it. The sight of the boots made her scramble up to her feet: They'd all been sleeping with their shoes on, just in case. Why would he take his off?
She thought about waking up Emma, but likely she was being ridiculous: He'd probably just gone for a walk. She reached to pull her butterfly knife out of her weapons belt and started down the hill, moving past Jules and Emma as she did. She saw with a sort of pang at her heart that their hands, between them, were clasped: Somehow they'd found their way toward each other in sleep. She wondered if she should reach down, gently separate them. But no, she couldn't do that. There was no way to gently separate Jules and Emma. The mere action of separating them at all was like an act of violence, a tear in the fabric of the world.
There was still heavy mist everywhere, and the sun pierced through it dimly in several places, creating a glowing white veil she could see through only in patches. "Mark?" she called softly. "Mark, where are you?"
She caught the sound she had heard before again, and now it was clearer: music. The sound of a pipe, the twang of a harp string. She strained to hear more--and then nearly screamed as something touched her shoulder. She whirled and saw Mark in front of her, holding his hands up as if to ward her off.
"I didn't mean to startle you," he said.
"Mark," she breathed, and then paused. "Are you Mark? Faeries weave illusions, don't they?"
He cocked his head to the side. His blond hair fell across his forehead. She remembered when it had hit his shoulders, as if he were the illustration of a faerie prince in a book. Now it was short, soft and curling. She had given him a modern haircut, and it seemed odd suddenly, out of place in Faerie. "I cannot hear my heart or what it tells me," he said. "I can only hear the wind."
It was one of the first things he had ever said to her.
"It is you," she said, exhaling with relief. "What are you doing? Why aren't you sleeping? We need to rest, if we are to arrive at the Unseelie Court by moon's rise."
"Can't you hear the music?" he said. It was louder now, the very clear sounds of fiddles and woodwinds, and the sound of dancing, too--laughter, and the stamp of feet. "It's a revel."
Cristina's heart skipped a beat. Faerie revels were things out of legend. The Fair Folk danced to enchanted music, and drank enchanted wine, and sometimes they would dance for days. The food they ate made you delirious or love-struck or mad . . . it could pierce your dreams . . . .
"You should go back to sleep," Mark said. "Revels can be dangerous."
"I've always wanted to see one." A surge of rebellion went through her. "I'm going to go closer."
"Cristina, don't." He sounded breathless as she turned and moved down the hill toward the noise. "It's the music--it's making you want to dance--"
She whirled around, a curl of black hair sticking to her damp cheek. "You brought us here," she said, and then she plunged on, toward the music, and it rose up and surrounded her, and she could hear Mark, swearing but following after her.
She reached a field at the foot of the hill and stopped to stare. The field was full of blurred, colorful movement. All around her the music echoed, piercingly sweet.
And everywhere, of course, there were Fair Folk. A troupe of faeries in the center of the dancers, playing their instruments, their heads thrown back, their feet stamping the ground. There were green-skinned wood faeries dancing, with gnarled hands and eyes that glowed yellow as sap. Faeries blue and green and shimmering as water, with hair like transparent netting cascading down to their feet. Beautiful girls with flowers wound through their hair, tied around their waists and throats, whose feet were hooves: pretty boys in ragged clothes with fever-bright eyes who held out their hands as they spun by.
"Come and dance," they called. "Come and dance, beautiful girl, chica bella, come and dance with us."
Cristina began to move toward them, toward the music and the dancing. The field was still clouded with fog, carving its streaks of white across the ground and hiding the blue of the sky. The mist glowed as she moved into it, heavy with strange scents: fruit and wine and incense-like smoke.
She began to dance, moving her body to the music's rhythm. Exhilaration seemed to pour into her with every breath she took in. She was suddenly no longer the girl who had let Diego Rosales fool her not once, but twice, not the girl who followed rules and trusted people until they broke her trust as casually as knocking a glass off a table. No longer the girl who stood back and let her friends be wild and crazy and waited to catch them when they fell. Now she was the one falling.
Hands seized her, spinning her around. Mark. His eyes were flashing. He pulled her up close against him, his arms slipping around her, but his grip was unyielding with anger. "What are you doing, Cristina?" he asked in a low voice. "You know about faeries, you know this is dangerous."
"That's why I'm doing it, Mark." She hadn't seen him look so furious since Kieran had come riding up to the Institute with Iarlath and Gwyn. She felt a small, secret pulse of excitement inside her chest, that she could make him that angry.
"They hate Shadowhunters here, don't you remember?" he said.
"They don't know I'm a Shadowhunter."
"Believe me," said Mark, leaning in close so that she could feel his breath, hot, against her ear. "They know."
"Then they don't care," said Cristina. "It's a revel. I've read about these. Faeries lose themselves in the music, like humans. They dance and they forget, just like us."
Mark's hands curved around her waist. It was a protective gesture, she told herself. It didn't mean anything. But her pulse quickened regardless. When Mark had first arrived at the Institute, he'd been stick-thin, hollow-eyed. Now she could feel muscle over his bones, the hard strength of him against her.
"I never asked you," he said, as they moved among the crowd. They were close to two girls dancing together; both of them
had their black hair bound up in elaborate crowns of berries and acorns. They wore dresses of russet and brown, ribbons around their slim throats, and swished their skirts away from Mark and Cristina, laughing at the couple's clumsiness. Cristina didn't mind. "Why faeries? Why did you make that the thing you studied?"
"Because of you." She tilted her head back to look up at him, saw the surprise that passed across his expressive face. The beginning of the gentle curves of wonder at the corners of his mouth. "Because of you, Mark Blackthorn."
Me? His lips shaped the word.
"I was in my mother's rose garden when I heard what had happened to you," she said. "I was only thirteen. The Dark War was ending, and the Cold Peace had been announced. The whole Shadowhunter world knew of your sister's exile, and that you had been abandoned. My great-uncle came out to tell me about it. My family always used to joke that I was softhearted, that it was easy to make me cry, and he knew I'd been worrying about you--so he told me, he said, 'Your lost boy will never be found now.' "
Mark swallowed. Emotions passed like storm clouds behind his eyes; not for him Julian's guardedness, his shields. "And did you?"
"Did I what?"
"Did you cry?" he said. They were still moving together, in the dance, but it was almost mechanical now: Cristina had forgotten the steps her feet were taking, she was aware only of Mark breathing, her fingers locked behind Mark's neck, Mark in her arms.
"I did not cry," Cristina said. "But I did decide that I would dedicate myself to eradicating the Cold Peace. It was not a fair Law then. It will never be a fair Law."
His lips parted. "Cristina--"
A voice like doves interrupted them. Soft, feathery, and light, it crooned, "Drinks, madam and sir? Something to cool you after dancing?"
A faerie with a face like a cat's--furred and whiskered--stood before them in the tatters of an Edwardian suit. He held a gold plate on which were many small glasses containing liquid of different colors: blue, red, and amber.
"Is it enchanted?" Cristina said breathlessly. "Will it give me strange dreams?"
"It will cool your thirst, lady," said the faerie. "And all I would ask for in return is a smile from your lips."
Cristina seized up a glass full of amber fluid. It tasted of passionfruit, sweet and tart--she took one swallow, and Mark dashed the glass from her hand. It fell tinkling at their feet, splashing his hand with liquid. He licked the fluid from his skin, glaring at her all the while.
Cristina backed away. She could feel a pleasant warmth spreading in her chest. The drinks seller was snapping at Mark, who pushed him away with a coin--a mundane penny--and started after Cristina.
"Stop," he said. "Cristina, slow down, you're going toward the center of the revel--the music will only be stronger there--"
She stopped, held out a hand to him. She felt fearless. She knew she ought to be terrified: She had swallowed a faerie drink, and anything might happen. But instead she only felt as if she were flying. She was soaring free, only Mark here to tether her to the ground. "Dance with me," she said.
He caught at her. He looked angry, still, but he held her tightly nonetheless. "You've had enough dancing. And drinking."
"Enough dancing?" It was the girls in russet again, their red mouths laughing. Other than their different-colored eyes, they looked nearly identical. One of them pulled the ribbon from around her throat--Cristina stared; her neck was horribly scarred, as if her head had nearly been severed from her body. "Dance together," the girl said--nearly spat it, as if it were a curse, and looped the ribbon around Mark's and Cristina's wrists, binding them together. "Enjoy the binding, Hunter." She grinned at Mark, and her teeth were black, as if they had been painted that color, and sharp as needles.
Cristina gasped, stumbling back, pulling Mark after her, the ribbon connecting them. It stretched like a rubber band, not breaking or fraying. Mark caught up to her, seizing her hand in his, his fingers threaded through hers.
He drew her after him, fast and sure-footed on the uneven terrain, finding the breaks in the heavy mist. They pushed between dancing couples until the grass under them was no longer trampled and the music was faint in their ears.
Mark veered to the side, making for a copse of trees. He slipped under the branches, holding the low-hanging ones aside to let Cristina in after him. Once she had ducked underneath, he released them, closing them both into a dirt-floored space beneath the trees, hidden from the outside world by long branches, laden with fruit, that touched the ground.
Mark sat down, drawing a knife from his belt. "Come here," he said, and when Cristina came to sit beside him, he took her hand and slashed apart the ribbon binding them.
It made a little shrieking, hurt sound, like a wounded animal, but frayed and gave. He let go of Cristina and dropped the knife. Faint sunlight filtered down through the branches above, and in the dim illumination, the ribbon still around his wrist looked like blood.
The ribbon was looped around Cristina's wrist as well, no longer burning, trailing its lonely end in the dirt. She worried at it with her nails until it came free and fell to the ground. Her fingers kept slipping. Probably the faerie drink, still in her system, she thought.
She glanced over at Mark. His face was drawn, his gold and blue eyes shadowed. "That could have been very bad," he said, casting the rest of his ribbon aside. "A binding spell like that can tie two people together and send one of them mad, make them drown themselves and pull the other in after them."
"Mark," Cristina said. "I'm sorry. I should have listened to you. You know more about revels than I do. You have experience. I only have the books I read."
"No," he said unexpectedly. "I wanted to go too. I liked dancing with you. It was good to be there with someone . . ."
"Human?" Cristina said.
The heat in her chest had turned into a strange pinching feeling, a hot pressure that increased when she looked at him. At the curves of his cheekbones, the hollows of his temples. His loose, wheat-colored shirt was open at the throat, and she could see that place she had always thought was the most beautiful spot on a man's body, the smooth muscle over the clavicle and the vulnerable hollow.
"Yes, human," he said. "We are all human, I know. But I have almost never known anyone as human as you."
Cristina felt breathless. The faerie mist had stolen her breath, she thought, that and the enchantment all around them.
"You are kind," he said, "one of the kindest people I have known. In the Hunt, there was not much kindness. When I think that when the sentence of the Cold Peace was passed, there was someone a thousand miles away from Idris, someone who had never met me but who cried for a boy who had been abandoned . . ."
"I said I didn't cry." Cristina's voice hitched.
Mark's hand was a pale blur. She felt his fingers against her face. They came away wet, shining in the mist-light. "You're crying now," he said.
When she caught at his hand, it was damp with her own tears. And when she leaned toward him through the mist, and kissed him, she tasted salt.
For a moment Mark was startled, unmoving, and Cristina felt a spear of terror go through her, worse than the sight of any demon. That Mark might not want this, that he might be horrified . . .
"Cristina," he said, as she broke away from him, and went up on his knees, his arm coming around her a little awkwardly, his hand burying itself in her hair. "Cristina," he said again, with a break in his voice, the rough sound of desire.
She put her hands on either side of his face, her palms in the hollows of his cheeks, and marveled at the softness where Diego had had stubble, rough against her skin. She let him come to her this time, closing her into the circle of his left arm, fitting his mouth to hers.
Stars exploded behind her eyelids. Not just any stars, but the many-colored stars of Faerie. She saw clouds and constellations; she tasted night air on his mouth. His lips moved frantically against hers. He was still whispering her name, incoherent between kisses. His free hand slid over her waist, up her
side. He groaned when her fingers found their way into the neck of his shirt and brushed along his collarbone, touched the beating pulse in his throat.
He said something in a language she didn't know, and then he was flat on the ground and she was over him, and he was pulling her down, hands fierce on her back and her shoulders, and she wondered if this was how it had always been for him with Kieran, fierce and ungentle. She remembered seeing them kiss in the desert behind the Institute, and how it had been a frantic thing, a clash of bodies, and it had sparked desire in her then and did again now.
He arched up and she heard him gasp as she slid down his body, kissing his throat, then his chest through his shirt, and then her fingers were on his buttons and she heard him laugh breathlessly, saying her name, and then, "I never thought you'd even look at me, not someone like you, Shadowhunter royalty--like a princess--"
"It's amazing what a bit of enchanted faerie drink will do." She meant to sound teasing, lighthearted. But Mark went still under her. A moment later he had moved, quick and graceful, and was sitting at least a foot from her, his hands up as if to hold her away.
"Faerie drink?" he echoed.
Cristina looked at him in surprise. "The sweet drink the cat-faced man gave to me. You tasted it."
"There was nothing in it," Mark said, with uncharacteristic sharpness. "I knew the moment I put my lips to my skin. It was only brambleberry juice, Cristina."
Cristina recoiled slightly, both from his anger and from the realization that there had been no blurring cloak of magic over the things she'd just done.
"But I thought--"
"You thought you were kissing me because you were intoxicated," Mark said. "Not because you wanted to, or because you actually like me."
"But I do like you." She rose to her knees, but Mark was already on his feet. "I have since I met you."
"Is that why you got together with Diego?" Mark said, and then shook his head, backing up. "Maybe I can't do this."
"Do what?" Cristina staggered upright.
"Be with a human who lies," Mark said, uninflected.
"But you've lied too," said Cristina. "You've lied about being with Emma."
"And you've taken part in that same lie."
"Because it has to be told," Cristina said. "For both their sakes. If Julian wasn't in love with her, then he wouldn't need to think--"
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