Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1)(117)

“You shouldn’t say those sort of things to me,” she said to Mark.

The wind blew his hair across his face; he pushed it back. “I thought mortal women liked compliments.” He sounded honestly puzzled.

“Do faerie women like them?”

“I don’t know many,” he said. “The Seelie Queen does enjoy a compliment. But there were no women in the Hunt.”

“But there was Kieran,” she said. “And what would he say if he knew you were telling me I was pretty? Because the way he looks at you . . .”

A look of shock passed over Mark’s face. He glanced down quickly at Julian, but his brother was absorbed in Emma. “How do you—?”

“I saw you,” she said. “In the parking lot. And when you disappeared today at the theater, I would guess that was because of him as well?”

“Please tell no one, Cristina.” The look of fear on his face broke her heart. “They would punish him, and me as well. We both swore we would not reveal our relationship to any Shadowhunters, lest they think I would be too loyal to Faerie and too likely to return to it, and not agree to our bargain. Also, Kieran is forbidden to see me now that I am out of the Hunt.”

“I will tell no one,” said Cristina. “I have not mentioned it, not to Emma, not to anyone.”

“You are as kind as you are lovely,” he said, but the words sounded rehearsed.

“I know you think you can’t trust mortals. But I will not betray you.”

There was nothing rehearsed about the look he gave her then.“I meant it when I said you were beautiful. I want you, and Kieran would not mind—”

“You want me?”

“Yes,” Mark said simply, and Cristina looked away, suddenly very aware of how close his body was to hers. Of the shape of his shoulders under his jacket. He was lovely as faeries were lovely, with a sort of unearthliness, as quicksilver as moonlight on water. He didn’t seem quite touchable, but she had seen him kiss Kieran and knew better. “You do not want to be wanted?”

In another time, the time before, Cristina would have blushed. “It is not the sort of compliment mortal women enjoy.”

“But why not?” said Mark.

“Because it makes it sound like I am a thing you want to use. And when you say Kieran would not mind, you make it sound as if he would not mind because I do not matter.”

“That is very human,” he said. “To be jealous of a body but not a heart.”

Cristina had studied faeries closely. It was true that unmarried faerie folk, regardless of sexual orientation, placed a very low value on physical fidelity, though a much greater value than humans did on emotional loyalty. There were few if any vows that had to do with sex, but many that had to do with true love. “You see, I do not want a body without a heart,” she said.

He did not reply, but she could read the look in his eyes. If she said the word, she could have Mark Blackthorn, for some value of having him. It was a strange thing to know, even if she did not want what he offered. But if he were offering more—well, there had been a time she had thought she would never want anyone again.

It was good to know that wasn’t true.

“Is Kieran the reason?” she said. “That you might return to Faerie, even if the killer is caught?”

“Kieran saved my life,” said Mark. “I was nothing in the Wild Hunt.”

“You are not nothing. You are the son of the Lady Nerissa.”

“And Kieran is the son of the King of the Unseelie Court,” said Mark flatly. “He did everything for me in the Wild Hunt. Protected me and kept me alive. And he has only me. Julian and the others, they have each other. They do not need me.”

But he didn’t sound convinced. He spoke as if the words were dead leaves, blowing across some hollow and aching space inside him. And in that moment Cristina yearned toward him more than she ever had, for she knew that feeling, to be so hollowed out by loss that you felt as if the wind could blow through you.

“That is not love,” Cristina said. “That is debt.”

Mark set his jaw. He had never looked more like a Blackthorn. “If there is one thing I have learned in my life, and I grant I have not learned much, it is this: Neither Fair Folk nor mortals know what love is or is not. No one does.”

“So, basically, you kind of solved the investigation,” said Livvy. She was lying on the rug in Julian’s room. They were all sprawled around his bedroom: Cristina perched neatly on a chair, Ty sitting against a wall with his headphones on, Julian cross-legged on his bed. He’d taken off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. The cuff links Emma had given him gleamed on the nightstand. Mark lay on his stomach across the foot of the bed, eye to eye with Church, who’d decided to pay them a visit, probably because of the weather. “I mean, now we know who did it. The murders.”

“Not exactly,” said Emma. She was sitting on the floor, leaning her back against the nightstand. “I mean, here’s what we do know. This group, these Followers or whatever they call themselves, they’re responsible for Stanley Wells’s murder. The Followers are mostly people who’ve had some brush with the supernatural. They have the Sight, they’re part faerie—Sterling’s sort of a werewolf. Every month they hold a Lottery. Someone gets picked, and that someone becomes a sacrifice.”