Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1)(66)

“But now you know it’s not a dream. Seeing your family, your home—”

“Emma. Stop.” He squeezed his eyes shut as if in pain. “I can say this to you because you are not a Blackthorn. You do not have Blackthorn blood running through your veins. I have been in the land of Faerie for years and it is a place where mortal blood is turned to fire. It is a place of beauty and terror beyond what can be imagined here. I have ridden with the Wild Hunt. I have carved a clear path of freedom among the stars and outrun the wind. And now I am asked to walk upon the earth again.”

“You belong where you’re loved,” Emma said. It was something her father had said, something she had always believed. She belonged here because Jules loved her and the children loved her. “Were you loved in Faerie?”

A shadow seemed to come down over Mark’s eyes, like curtains closing in a dark room. “I meant to tell you. I am sorry about your parents.”

Emma waited for the familiar burn of sickening rage that the mention of her parents by anyone but Jules always brought on, but it didn’t come. There was something in the way he said it—something about the strange mixture of formal, faerie speech and sincere regret—that was oddly calming.

“And I’m sorry about your father,” she told him.

“I saw him Turned,” Mark said. “Though I did not see him die in the Dark War. I hope he did not suffer.”

Emma felt a ripple of shock pass up her spine. Did he not know how his father had died? Had no one told him? “He—” she began. “It was in the middle of battle. It was very quick.”

“You saw it?”

Emma scrambled to her feet. “It’s late,” she said. “We should get to sleep.”

He looked up at her with his eerie eyes. “You do not want to sleep,” he said, and he looked wild to her suddenly, wild as the stars or the desert, wild as all natural, untamed things. “You have always been one for adventure, Emma, and I do not think that has died in you, has it? Tied though you might be to my unadventurous little brother?”

“Julian isn’t unadventurous,” Emma said angrily. “He’s responsible.”

“You would have me believe there is a difference?”

Emma looked up at the moon, and then back at Mark. “What are you suggesting?”

“It occurred to me, as I looked out at the ocean,” he said, “I may be able to find the place where the ley lines converge. I have seen such places before, with the Hunt. They give off a certain energy that fey folk can feel.”

“What? But how—”

“I’ll show you. Come with me to look for the place. Why wait? The investigation is urgent, isn’t it? We must find the killer?”

Excitement rose up in Emma, and sharp desire; she tried to keep it off her face, how badly she wanted, needed to know, to take the next step, to throw herself into searching, fighting, finding. “Jules,” she said, rising to her feet. “We have to get Jules and bring him.”

Mark looked grim. “I do not wish to see him.”

Emma stood her ground. “Then we don’t go,” she said. “He’s my parabatai—where I go, he goes.”

Something flashed in Mark’s eyes. “If you won’t go without him, we will not go at all,” he said. “You cannot force me to give up the information.”

“Force you? Mark—” Emma broke off, exasperated. “Fine. Fine. We can go. Just us.”

“Just us,” he repeated. He stood up. His movements were impossibly light and fast. “But first you must prove yourself.”

He stepped off the roof.

Emma skidded to the edge of the shingle and leaned out. There was Mark, clinging to the wall of the Institute, an arm’s length below her. He looked up with a fierce grin. A grin that spoke of empty air and cold wind, the torn surface of the ocean, the ragged edge of clouds. A grin that beckoned to the wild, unbound side of Emma, the side that dreamed of fire and battle and blood and vengeance.

“Climb down with me,” he said, and now there was an edge of mockery in his voice.

“You’re crazy,” she hissed, but he had already begun to move down the wall, using handholds and footholds that Emma couldn’t even see. The ground swung under her. Real heights: If she fell from the roof of the Institute, she might well die; there was no assurance an iratze could save her.

She got down on her knees and turned her back to the ocean. She slid down, her nails scraping shingle, and then she was clinging to the gutter with her hands, her legs dangling out into the air.

She scrabbled at the wall with her bare feet. Thank the Angel she wasn’t wearing boots. Her feet were calloused from walking and fighting; they slipped along the wall until they found a crack in the surface. She jammed her toes into it, relieving the weight on her arms.

Don’t look down.

For as long as Emma could remember, the voice in her head that calmed her panic had been Jules’s. She heard it now, bringing her hands down, her fingers jamming into the space between two stones. She lowered herself down, an inch at first, then farther as she found another foothold. She heard Jules: You’re climbing over the rocks at Leo Carrillo. It’s only a few feet down to soft sand. Everything’s safe.

The wind blew her hair across her face. She turned her head to shake it out of her eyes and realized she was passing a window. Pale light burned behind the curtains. Cristina’s room, maybe?