Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1)(75)

“Agreed,” Julian said. “We’ll need to set up something at the convergence. Something that’ll warn us.”

“Tomorrow, during the day,” Emma said. “The Mantid demons ought to be inactive—”

Julian laughed. “You know what we have tomorrow? Testing,” he said. Twice a year Diana was required to test them on certain basics, from rune drawing to training to languages, and report back to the Clave on their progress.

There was a chorus of protest. Julian held his hands up. “I’ll text Diana about it,” he said. “But if we don’t do it, the Clave will get suspicious.”

Mark said something unprintable about what the Clave could do with its suspicions.

“I don’t think I know that word,” Cristina said, looking amused.

“I’m not sure I do either,” Emma said. “And I know a lot of bad words.”

Mark leaned back with the beginning of a smile, then sucked in his breath. He pulled his bloody shirt collar away from his neck and glanced down gingerly at his injured chest.

Julian set his bottle down. “Let me see.”

Mark let go of his collar. “There is nothing you can do. It will heal.”

“It’s a demon injury,” said Julian. “Let me see it.”

Mark looked at him, startled. The waves made a soft soughing sound around them. There was no one left outside the restaurant except them; the other tables had emptied. Mark hadn’t heard that voice of Julian’s before, Emma thought, the one that brooked no argument, the one that sounded like a grown man’s. The kind of man you listened to.

Mark lifted the front of his shirt. The cut ran jaggedly across his chest. It was no longer bleeding, but the sight of the ragged pale flesh made Emma grit her teeth.

“Let me—” Julian began.

Mark sprang off the table. “I am fine,” he said. “I do not need your healing magic. I do not need your runes of safety.” He touched his shoulder, where a black Mark bloomed like a butterfly: a permanent rune of protection. “I have had this since I was ten,” he said. “I had this when they took me, and this when they broke me and made me one of them. Never has it helped me. The runes of the Angel are lies cast into the teeth of Heaven.”

Hurt bloomed and faded in Julian’s eyes. “They’re not perfect,” he said. “Nothing is perfect. But they do help. I just don’t want to see you hurt.”

“Mark,” Cristina said in a soft voice. But Mark had gone somewhere else, somewhere where none of their voices could reach him. He stood with his eyes blazing, his hands opening and closing into fists.

Slowly, his hand came up, caught the hem of his shirt. Pulled it up and over his head. He shrugged the shirt off, dropping it to the sand. Emma saw pale skin, much paler than hers, a hard chest and a narrow waist cut with the fine lines of old scars. Then he turned around.

His back was covered in runes, from nape to waist. But not like a normal Shadowhunter’s, where the black Marks faded eventually to a thin white line against the skin. These were raised and thick and livid.

Julian had gone white around the mouth. “What . . . ?”

“When I first came to Faerie, they mocked me for my Nephilim blood,” Mark said. “The Folk of the Unseelie Court took my stele and broke it, they said it was nothing but a dirty stick. And when I fought back for it, they used knives to cut the Angel’s runes into my skin. After that I stopped fighting with them about Shadowhunters. And I swore no other rune would touch my skin.”

He bent down and picked up his bloody, wet shirt, and stood facing them, his rage gone, vulnerable again.

“Maybe they could still be healed,” Emma said. “The Silent Brothers—”

“I don’t need them healed,” said Mark. “They serve as a reminder.”

Julian slid off the table. “A reminder of what?”

“Not to trust,” said Mark.

Cristina looked at Emma across the boys’ heads. There was a terrible sadness on her face.

“I am sorry your protection rune failed you,” Julian said, and his voice was low and careful, and Emma had never wanted to put her arms around him so much as she did then, as he faced his brother in the ocean-washed moonlight, his heart in his eyes. His hair was a tangle, his soft curls like question marks against his forehead. “But there are other kinds of protection. Your family protects you. We will always protect you, Mark. We won’t let them make you go back.”

Mark smiled, the oddest, sad smile. “I know,” he said. “My gentle little brother. I know.”

“It’s done,” Diana said, tossing her duffel bag onto the kitchen island with a clanking sound.

Emma looked up. She’d been over by the window with Cristina, testing the bandages on her hands. Julian’s healing runes had taken care of most of her injuries, but there were some ichor burns that were still sore.

Livvy, Dru, and Tavvy were crowded around the kitchen table, fighting over who got the chocolate milk. Ty had his headphones on and was reading, calm in his own world. Julian was at the stove, making bacon and toast and eggs—with burned bits in them, the way Dru liked.

Diana went over to the sink and rinsed off her hands. She was in jeans and a T-shirt, dirt on her clothes and streaking her face. Her hair was pulled back in a tightly knotted bun.