Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices #2)(11)

"Since the Dark War, Arthur has been prone to flare-ups of headaches and pain in his old wounds," added Diana. "I'll run interference between him and the Centurions until he's feeling better."

"There's really nothing to worry about," said Diego. "They're Centurions-disciplined, orderly soldiers. They won't be throwing wild parties or making unreasonable demands." He put an arm around Cristina. "I'll be glad to have you meet some of my friends."

Cristina smiled back at him. Emma couldn't help but glance toward Mark to see if he was looking at Cristina and Diego the way he often did-a way that made her wonder how Julian could miss it. One day he would notice, and there would be awkward questions to answer.

But that day wouldn't be today, because sometime in the past few minutes Mark had slipped soundlessly out of the library. He was gone.

* * *

Mark associated different rooms in the Institute with different feelings, most of them new since his return. The rowaned library made him tense. The entryway, where he had faced down Sebastian Morgenstern so many years ago, made his skin prickle, his blood heat.

In his own room he felt lonely. In the twins' rooms, and Dru's or Tavvy's, he could lose himself in being their older brother. In Emma's room he felt safe. Cristina's room was barred to him. In Julian's room, he felt guilty. And in the training room, he felt like a Shadowhunter.

He had made unconsciously for the training room the moment he'd left the library. It was still too much for Mark, the way that Shadowhunters hid their emotions. How could they bear a world where Helen was exiled? He could hardly bear it; he yearned for his sister every day. And yet they all would have looked at him in surprise if he had cried out in grief or fallen to his knees. Jules, he knew, didn't want the Centurions there-but his expression had hardly changed. Faeries could riddle and cheat and scheme, but they did not hide their honest pain.

It was enough to send him to the weapons rack, his hands feeling for whatever would let him lose himself in practice. Diana had owned a weapons shop in Idris once, and there was always an impeccable array of beautiful weapons laid out for them to train with: Greek machaera, with their single cutting edges. There were Viking spatha, two-handed claymores and zweihänder, and Japanese wooden bokken, used only for training.

He thought of the weapons of faerie. The sword he had carried in the Wild Hunt. The fey used nothing made of iron, for weapons and tools of iron made them sick. The sword he had borne in the Hunt had been made of horn, and it had been light in his hand. Light like the elf-bolts he had shot from his bow. Light like the wind under the feet of his horse, like the air around him when he rode.

He lifted a claymore from the rack and turned it experimentally in his hand. He could feel that it was made of steel-not quite iron, but an iron alloy-though he didn't have the reaction to iron that full-blooded faeries did.

It did feel heavy in his hand. But so much had been feeling heavy since he had returned home. The weight of expectation was heavy. The weight of how much he loved his family was heavy.

Even the weight of what he was involved in with Emma was heavy. He trusted Emma. He didn't question that she was doing the right thing; if she believed it, he believed in her.

But lies didn't come to him easily, and he hated lying to his family most of all.

"Mark?" It was Clary, followed by Jace. The meeting in the library must be over. They had both changed into gear; Clary's red hair was very bright, like a splash of blood against her dark clothes.

"I'm here," Mark said, placing the sword he'd been holding back in the rack. The full moon was high, and white light filtered through the windows. The moon traced a path like a road across the sea from where it kissed the horizon to the edge of the beach.



       
         
       
        

Jace hadn't said anything yet; he was watching Mark with hooded golden eyes, like a hawk's. Mark couldn't help but remember Clary and Jace as they had been when he'd met them just after the Hunt had taken him. He'd been hiding in the tunnels near the Seelie Court when they'd come walking toward him, and his heart had ached and broken to see them. Shadowhunters, striding through the dangers of Faerie, heads held high. They were not lost; they were not running. They were not afraid.

He had wondered if he would have that pride again, that lack of fear. Even as Jace had pressed a witchlight into his hand, even as he had said, Show them what a Shadowhunter is made of, show them that you aren't afraid, Mark had been sick with fear.

Not for himself. For his family. How would they fare in a world at war, without him to protect them?