Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1)(167)

“It changes things,” she whispered. “It changes everything for me.”

“Emma,” he said. “You’d better go back inside. Go to sleep. We both should. . . .”

She gritted her teeth. “If you’re going to walk away from me now, you’ll have to do it yourself.”

He hesitated. She saw the tension in him, in his body, rise like a wave about to break.

“Walk away from me,” she said harshly. “Walk away.”

His tension crested and fell; something in him seemed to collapse, water breaking against rocks. “I can’t,” he said, his voice low and broken, “God, I can’t,” and he half-closed his eyes, bringing up his other hand to cradle her face. His hands slid into her hair, and he drew her toward him. She inhaled a breath of cold air and then his mouth was on hers and her senses exploded.

She had wondered, in the back of her mind, if what had happened on the beach between them had been a fluke born of their shared adrenaline. Surely kisses weren’t meant to be like that, so all-encompassing that they ripped through you like lightning, tore down your defenses and decimated your self-control.

Apparently not.

Her hands fisted in the material of Julian’s jacket, dragging him toward her, closer, closer. There was sugar and caffeine on his lips. He tasted like energy. Her hands slid up under his shirt, touching the bare skin of his back, and he broke away from her to suck in his breath. His eyes were closed, his lips parted.

“Emma,” he breathed, and the desire in his voice tore a scorching path through her. When he reached for her, she almost fell against him. He swiveled her body around, pushing her back against a pillar, his body a strong, hot line against hers—

A sound cut through the fog in her mind.

Emma and Julian tore apart, staring.

Both of them had been in the Hall of Accords in Idris when the Wild Hunt had come, howling around the walls, tearing at the ceiling. Emma remembered the sound of Gwyn’s horn, blasting through the air. Vibrating every nerve in her body. A high, hollow, lonesome sound.

It came again now, echoing through the morning.

The sun had risen while Emma had been wrapped up in Julian, and the road that led down to the highway was illuminated by sunlight. There were three figures coming up it, on horseback: one black horse, one white, and one gray.

Emma recognized two of the riders immediately: Kieran, sitting his horse like a dancer, his hair nearly black in the sunlight, and next to him, Iarlath, wrapped in dark robes.

The third rider was familiar to Emma from a hundred illustrations in books. He was a big, broad man, bearded, wearing dark armor that looked like the overlapping bark of a tree. He had tucked his horn under his arm; it was a massive object, etched all over with a pattern of deer.

Gwyn the Hunter, the leader of the Wild Hunt, had come to the Institute. And he did not look pleased.

Mark stood at an upstairs window and looked out at the sun rising over the desert. The mountains seemed cut out of dark paper, sharp and distinct against the sky. For a moment he imagined he could reach out and touch them, that he could fly from this window and reach the top of the highest peak.

The moment passed, and once again he saw the distance between himself and the mountains. Ever since he had returned to the Institute, he had felt as if he were struggling to see everything through a thin layer of glamour. Sometimes he saw the Institute as it was, sometimes it faded from view and instead he saw a bare landscape and the fires of the Wild Hunt burning in small encampments.

Sometimes he turned to say something to Kieran only to discover that he wasn’t there. Kieran had been there every morning that Mark had woken up for years of Faerie time.

Kieran had been meant to come and see him the night Mark had watched the children in the kitchen. But he’d never come. There’d been no communication from him, either, and Mark was worried now. He told himself that the faerie prince was probably just being cautious, but he found his hand straying to the arrowhead at his throat more often than usual.

It was a gesture that reminded him of Cristina, the way she touched the medallion at her throat when she was nervous. Cristina. He wondered what had passed between her and Diego.

Mark turned away from the window just as the sound came. His hearing had been sharpened by years in the Hunt; he doubted anyone else in the Institute would have heard it or been awakened.

It was a single note, the sound of Gwyn the Hunter’s horn: sharp and harsh, as lonely as mountains. Mark’s blood went cold. It was not a greeting or even a call to the Hunt. It was the note Gwyn blew when they were searching out a deserter. It was the sound of betrayal.

Julian had straightened up, raking his hands through his tangled curls, his jaw set. “Emma,” he said. “Go back inside.”

Emma turned and strode back into the Institute—only long enough to seize up Cortana from where it hung beside the door. She stalked back outside to find that the faerie convoy had dismounted their horses, who remained unnaturally still, as if tied in place. Their eyes were blood red, their manes wound with red flowers. Faerie steeds.

Gwyn had approached the foot of the steps. He had a strange face, slightly alien: wide eyes, broad cheekbones, wicked eyebrows. One black eye, and one that was pale blue.

Beside him came Iarlath, his yellow eyes unblinking. And at his other side, Kieran. He was as beautiful as Emma had remembered him, and looked as cold. His pale face was as severely cut as white marble, his black and silver eyes uncanny in the daylight.