Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1)(187)

“Why?” Kieran said. He was standing facing a little away from Mark, his posture rigid, as if he expected to be slapped. “Why come with me?”

“Because you require watching,” said Mark. “I could trust you once. I cannot trust you now.”

“That is not the truth,” said Kieran. “I know you, Mark. I know when you lie.”

Mark spun on him. He had always felt a little afraid of Kieran, he realized: of the power of his rank, of his unassailable surety in himself. That fear was gone now, and he couldn’t say if it was because of the Courage rune on his shoulder or because he no longer desperately needed Kieran to live. Wanted him, loved him—those were different questions. But he could survive, either way. He was a Shadowhunter.

“Fine,” Mark said, and he knew he should have said “very well,” but the language wasn’t in him anymore, it didn’t beat in his blood, the high speech of Faerie. “I’ll tell you why I wanted to come with you—”

There was a flash of white. Windspear cleared a small rise and bounded up to them, answering the call of her master. She whinnied when she saw Mark and nosed at his shoulder.

He stroked her neck. A hundred times she had carried him and Kieran in the Hunt, a hundred times they had shared a single mount, and ridden together, and fought together, and as Kieran climbed up onto the horse’s back the familiarity was like fishhooks under Mark’s skin.

Kieran looked down at him, every inch the prince despite his bloodstained clothes. His eyes were half-lidded crescents of silver and black. “So tell me,” he said.

Mark felt the Agility rune burn on his back as he swung himself up behind Kieran. His arms went around Kieran automatically, hands settling themselves where they had always settled, at Kieran’s belt. He felt Kieran inhale sharply.

He wanted to drop his head to Kieran’s shoulder. He wanted to put his hands over Kieran’s and lace their fingers together. He wanted to feel what he had felt living among the Hunt, that with Kieran he was safe, with Kieran he had someone who would never leave him.

But there were worse things than being left.

“Because,” Mark said, “I wished to ride with you in the Hunt one last time.” He felt Kieran flinch. Then the faerie boy leaned forward, and Mark heard him say a few words to Windspear in the Fair Speech. As the horse began to run, Mark reached back to touch the place where Julian had put the runes. He had felt a rush of panic when the stele touched his skin, and then a calm that had flowed through him, surprising him.

Maybe the runes of Heaven truly did belong on his skin. Maybe he’d been born to them after all.

He held tight to Kieran as Windspear lifted up into the sky, hooves tearing the air, and the Institute spun away below them.

When Emma and the others reached the convergence, Mark and Kieran were already there. They cantered out of the shadows on the back of a gorgeous white stallion that made Emma think of all the times in her childhood that she had wanted a horse.

The Toyota came to a stop. The sky was bare of clouds, and the moonlight was sharp and silver as a knife. It outlined Mark and Kieran, turned them into the brilliantly illuminated outlines of faerie knights. Neither of them looked human.

The field that reached to the bluff lay deceptively peaceful under the moonlight. The wide space of sea grass and sage bushes moved with soft rustles. The granite hill rose above it all, the dark space in the wall seeming to beckon them closer.

“We killed many Mantids,” said Mark. His eyes met Emma’s. “Cleared the way.”

Kieran sat glowering, his face half-hidden by dark hair. Mark had his hands on Kieran’s belt, steadying himself. As if suddenly recollecting this, Mark let go and slid to the ground.

“We’d better go in,” Mark said, tipping his face up to Kieran’s. “You and Windspear stand guard.”

“But I—” Kieran began.

“This is Blackthorn family business,” said Mark in a tone that brooked no argument. Kieran looked toward Cristina and Diego, opened his mouth as if to voice a protest, and then closed it again.

“Weapons check, everyone,” Julian said. “Then we head in.”

Everyone, even Diego, obediently checked their belts and gear. Ty fished an extra seraph blade out of the car trunk. Mark looked over Dru’s gear, reminded her again that her job was to stay behind them and to stick close to the others.

Emma unbuckled her arm guard and rolled up her sleeve. She held her arm out to Julian. He looked at her bare arm and then up at her face and nodded. “Which one?”

“Endurance,” she said. She was already marked with runes for courage and accuracy, runes for precision and healing. The Angel had never really given the Shadowhunters runes for emotional pain, though—there were no runes to mend grief or a broken heart.

The idea that her parents’ death had been a failed experiment, a pointless throwaway, hurt more than Emma could have imagined. She had thought all these years they had died for some reason, but it was no reason at all. They had simply been the only Shadowhunters available.

Julian took her arm gently, and she felt the familiar and welcome pressure of the stele against her skin. As the Mark emerged, it seemed to flow into her bloodstream, like a shaft of cool water.

Endurance. She would have to endure this, this knowledge, fight past and through it. Do it for Tavvy, she thought. For Julian. For all of them. And maybe at the end of it, she would have her revenge.