Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1)(106)

“But your dad’s tux—”

She looked up at him, sideways. “Don’t worry about it.”

A dozen flecks of gold in her left eye, only seven in her right. Each one like a tiny starburst.

“I’ll be right back,” Julian said, and jogged up the stairs toward his brother. Mark was on the landing, his arms held out in front of him as if he were examining the sleeves of his fur coat and deciding that they, in fact, were the problem.

Dru, holding Tavvy’s hand, had joined the twins. They were all giggling. The glow on Ty’s face when he looked at Mark made Julian warm and cold all at once.

What if Mark decided not to stay? What if they couldn’t find the killer and he was taken back to the Wild Hunt? What if?

“Would you say I’m overdressed or underdressed?” Mark inquired, arching his eyebrows.

Emma burst out laughing. She collapsed onto the bottom step of the staircase. A moment later Cristina had joined her. They clutched each other, helpless with laughter.

Julian wanted to laugh too. He wished he could. He wished he could forget the darkness that flickered at the edge of his vision. He wished he could close his eyes and fall, forgetting for one moment that there was no net stretched out below to catch him.

“Are you ready yet?” Julian asked the closed door of the bathroom. He’d retrieved John Carstairs’s suit from Emma’s trunk and dragged Mark back to his own bedroom to change. The thought of his brother being naked in Emma’s room didn’t sit well with him, even if Emma wasn’t there.

The door to the bathroom opened and Mark stepped out. The tux was black, simple. It was impossible to see where the runed bands of fabric had been snipped away. The elegant lines of it seemed to sweep upward, making Mark appear taller, more polished. For the first time since his return, every bit of the feral faerie child in him appeared to have been brushed away like cobwebs. He looked human. Like someone who’d always been human.

“Why do you bite your nails?” he said.

Julian, who hadn’t even been conscious that he was gnawing on the side of his thumb—the satisfying pain of skin between his teeth, the metal of the blood in his mouth—dropped his hands into his lap. “Bad habit.”

“It’s something people do when they’re stressed,” said Mark. “Even I know that.” His fingers scrabbled uselessly at his tie. He frowned down at it.

Julian got to his feet and went over to his brother, taking the loops of the tie in his hands. He couldn’t remember who had taught him how to knot a tie. Malcolm, he thought. It had almost certainly been Malcolm.

“But what do you have to be stressed about, little brother?” Mark said. “You weren’t carried away by the faeries. You’ve spent your life here. Not that the life of a Shadowhunter isn’t stressful, but why are you the one with the bloody hands?”

Julian’s fingers faltered for a moment. “You don’t know everything about me, Mark. Just like I’m willing to bet I don’t know everything about you.”

Mark’s blue-and-gold eyes were wide and guileless. “Ask me.”

“I’d rather learn in my own time.” Julian gave the tie a final tug and stepped back to examine his handiwork. Mark looked as if he might have stepped out of a catalog advertising tuxedoes—if male catalog models had pointed ears.

“I wouldn’t,” said Mark. “Tell me one thing I don’t know about you that makes you bite your fingers.”

Julian turned toward the door, then paused, hand on the knob. “Our father,” he said. “You know what happened to him?”

“He was Turned into one of the Endarkened by Sebastian Morgenstern,” said Mark. “How could I forget?”

“And then?”

“And then?” Mark sounded puzzled. “And then he died during the Dark War.”

“Yes, he died,” said Julian. “Because I killed him.”

Mark drew in his breath. There was shock in that gasp, and pity. Julian tensed. He couldn’t bear being pitied.

“He was coming for Ty,” said Julian. “I did what I had to do.”

“It wasn’t him,” Mark said swiftly.

“That’s what everyone says.” Julian was still facing the door. He felt a light tap on his shoulder and turned to see Mark looking at him.

“But everyone didn’t see it happen, Julian, our father being Turned. I did,” Mark said, and suddenly in his voice there was the sound of the older brother he had been, the one who knew more, had lived more. “The light in his eyes went out like a candle guttering in the dark. He was already dead inside. All you did was bury the body.”

There was sadness in Mark’s eyes, and knowledge, the knowledge of dark things. Mark had blood on his hands too, Julian thought, and for a moment the idea was such a relief that he felt the weight on his shoulders lift incrementally.

“Thank you for the assistance,” Mark said formally. “With my manner of dress. I will not trust the twins again with important matters of human tradition.”

Julian felt his lip twitch up at the corner. “Yeah, I wouldn’t.”

Mark looked down at himself. “I am presentable?”

“You look like James Bond.”

Mark smiled and Julian felt a small swell of absurd gladness rise up in his chest, that his brother had gotten the reference, that he was pleased.