Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1)(43)

“You want us to conduct an investigation on your behalf?” Julian snapped. “We’re Shadowhunters. We’re bound by the Cold Peace, just like you. It is forbidden for us to help the Fair Folk, forbidden for us to even entertain you here. You know what we’d be risking. How dare you ask?”

There was rage in Julian’s voice—rage out of proportion to the suggestion, but Emma couldn’t blame him. She knew what he saw when he looked at faeries, especially faeries with the broken eyes of the Wild Hunt. He saw the cold wastes of Wrangel Island. He saw the empty bedroom in the Institute where Mark no longer was.

“It isn’t just their investigation,” Emma said quietly. “It’s mine, too. This has to do with my parents.”

“I know,” Julian said, and his anger was gone. There was an ache in his voice instead. “But not this way, Emma—”

“Why come here?” Arthur interrupted, looking pained, his face gray. “Why not to a warlock?”

Kieran’s beautiful face twisted. “We cannot consult a warlock,” he said. “None of Lilith’s Children will deal with us. The Cold Peace has left us shunned by other Downworlders. But you can visit the High Warlock Malcolm Fade, or Magnus Bane himself, and demand an answer to your question. We are chained, but you—” He spoke the word with scorn. “You are free.”

“This is the wrong family to have come to,” said Arthur. “You are asking us to break the Law for you, as if we have some special regard for the Fair Folk. But the Blackthorns have not forgotten what you have taken from them.”

“No,” Emma said. “We need those papers, we need—”

“Emma.” Arthur’s look was sharp. “Enough.”

Emma dropped her gaze, but her blood was singing through her veins, a determined melody of rebellion. If the faeries left and took the papers with them, she would find some way to track them down, to retrieve the information, to learn what she had to learn. Some way. Even if the Institute couldn’t risk it, she could.

Iarlath looked at Arthur. “I do not think you wish to make such a hasty decision.”

Arthur’s jaw tightened. “Why do you second-guess me, neighbor?”

The Good Neighbors. An old, old term for faerie folk. It was Kieran who replied: “Because we have something that you want above all other things. And if you help us, we are willing to give it to you.”

Julian paled. Emma, staring at him, was for a moment too caught up in his reaction to realize herself what they were implying. When she did, her heart gave an uneven throb inside her chest.

“What is it?” Julian whispered. “What do you have that we want?”

“Oh, come now,” Kieran said. “What do you think?”

The door of the Sanctuary, the one that went to the outside of the Institute, opened, and the faerie in the brown robes came in. He moved with grace and silence, no hesitation or trepidation— without anything human about his movements at all. Entering the pattern of the angelic rune on the floor, he came to a stop. The room was completely silent as he raised his hands to his hood and—for the first time—hesitated.

His hands were human, long-fingered, tanned pale brown.

Familiar.

Emma wasn’t breathing. She couldn’t breathe. Julian looked as if he were in a dream. Arthur’s face was blank, confused.

“Take your hood down, boy,” said Iarlath. “Show your face.” The familiar hands tightened on the hood and yanked it down. Pushing, then shoving the cloak off his shoulders, as if the material of it clung unpleasantly. Emma saw the flash of a long, lithe body, of pale hair, of thin hands, as the cloak was wrenched away and slid to the ground in a dark puddle.

A boy stood in the heart of the rune, panting. A boy who looked about seventeen, with fair hair that curled like acanthus vines, tangled with twigs and briars, hanging to his shoulders. His eyes showed the shattered doubling of the Wild Hunt: two colors—one gold, one Blackthorn blue. His feet were bare, black with dirt, his clothes ragged and torn.

A wave of dizziness passed through Emma along with a terrible mixture of horror and relief and amazement. Julian had stiffened, as if he’d been shocked with electricity. She saw the slight tightening of his jaw, the twitch of a muscle in his cheek. He didn’t open his mouth; it was Arthur who spoke, half-rising from his chair, his voice thready and uncertain:

“Mark?”

Mark’s eyes widened in confusion. He opened his mouth to answer. Iarlath whirled on him. “Mark Blackthorn of the Wild Hunt,” he snapped. “Do not speak until given permission to speak.”

Mark’s lips slammed together. His face was still.

“And you,” said Kieran, holding up a hand as Julian started forward, “stay where you are.”

“What have you done to him?” Julian’s eyes flashed. “What have you done to my brother?”

“Mark belongs to the Wild Hunt,” said Iarlath. “If we choose to release him to you, it will be at our recognizance.”

Arthur had sunk back into the chair behind him. He was blinking owlishly and looking from Mark to the faerie host. The gray color was back in his face. “The dead rise and the lost return,” he said. “We should fly blue banners from the tops of the towers.”

Kieran seemed coldly puzzled. “Why does he say that?”