Lady Midnight (The Dark Artifices #1)(86)

“I don’t know how much time I have,” he said. “If we do not solve their puzzle, the Wild Hunt will reclaim me.”

“Do you want them to?” Cristina asked softly.

He said nothing, only glanced up at the sky.

“Is that why you come up to the roof? Because from here you can see the Hunt if they go by?”

Mark was silent for a long time. Then he said, “I imagine sometimes I can hear them. That I can hear the sound of their hooves against the clouds.”

She smiled. “I like the way you talk,” she said. “It always sounds like poetry.”

“I speak the way I was taught by the Folk. So many years under their tutelage.” He turned his hands over and placed them on his knees. The insides of his wrists were marked by odd, long scars.

“How many years? Do you know?”

He shrugged. “Time is not measured there as it is measured here. I could not say.”

“The years do not show on your face,” she said quietly. “Sometimes you look as young as Julian and sometimes you look as the fey do—ageless.”

Now he looked at her sideways. “You don’t think I look like a Shadowhunter?”

“Do you want to?”

“I want to look like my family,” he said. “I cannot have the Blackthorn coloring, but I can look as much like Nephilim as possible. Julian was right—if I wish to be part of the investigation, I cannot stand out.”

Cristina held back from telling Mark that there was no world in which he didn’t stand out. “I can make you look like a Shadowhunter. If you come downstairs with me.”

He moved as noiselessly on the shingled roof as if he had the padded feet of a cat or as if he were wearing a Soundless rune. He stepped aside to let her lead the way downstairs. Even that was hushed, and when she brushed by him, his skin was cool as night air.

She led the way to his room; he had left the lights off, so she illuminated her witchlight and set it down by the bed. “That chair,” she said, pointing. “Bring it into the middle of the room and sit down. I’ll be right back.”

He looked after her quizzically as she left the room. When she returned, carrying a damp comb, a towel, and a pair of scissors, he was seated in the chair, still with the same quizzical look. He didn’t sit the way other teenage boys did, all sprawl and legs and arms. He sat the way kings did in drawings, upright but deliberate, as if the crown rested uneasily on his head.

“Are you going to cut my throat?” he asked as she came toward him with the towel and the sharp scissors gleaming.

“I’m going to cut your hair.” She looped the towel around his neck and moved to stand behind him. His head tipped back to follow her movements as she took hold of his hair, running her fingers through it. It was the kind of hair that should have been curly but was weighed down by its own length and tangles.

“Hold still,” she said.

“As my lady requests.”

She ran the comb through his hair and began to cut, careful to keep the length even. As she snipped away the weight of his silvery-blond mane, it sprang free in adorable curls like Julian’s. They twined up against the back of his neck as if they wanted to be close to him.

She remembered touching Diego’s hair; it had been thick under her fingers, dark and textured. Mark’s was fine, like corn silk. It fell like gleaming chaff, catching the witchlight.

“Tell me about the faerie Court,” she said. “I’ve always heard stories. My mother told me some, and my uncle.”

“We didn’t see it much,” he said, sounding very ordinary for a moment. “Gwyn and the Hunters aren’t part of any Court. He keeps himself to himself. We joined the Courts and the gentry only on nights when there were revels. But those were—”

He was silent for so long she wondered if he had fallen asleep or was perhaps simply deathly bored.

“If you had been to one you would not forget it,” he said. “Great sparkling caves or deserted copses in woodlands full of will-o’-the-wisp lights. There are still some parts of this world that are undiscovered by all but the Folk. There was dancing to wear your feet down, and there were beautiful boys and girls, and kisses were cheaper than wine but the wine was sweet and the fruit sweeter. And you would wake up in the morning and it would all be gone, but you could still hear the music in your head.”

“I think I would find it very frightening.” She moved around to stand in front of him. He looked up at her with his curious two-colored eyes and she felt a tremor run through her hand, one she’d never felt when she cut Diego’s hair or his brother Jaime’s or any of her little cousins’. Of course, they’d been twelve when she’d clipped their hair, showing off what her mother had taught her, so maybe it was different when you were older. “Everything so glamorous and beautiful. How can a human compare?”

He looked surprised. “But you would be lovely in the Court,” he said. “They would turn leaves and flowers into jeweled crowns and sandals for you. You would sparkle and be admired. The Folk love nothing more than mortal beauty.”

“Because it fades,” she said.

“Yes,” he admitted. “It is true that eventually you will become gray and bent and withered, and it is possible that hair will sprout from your chin. And there is also the issue of warts.” He caught her glare. “But that time is a long time away,” he added hastily.