"I didn't want to upset the kids," said Alec, "and I thought you could reassure her better-"
Cristina scrambled to her feet. "Is Livvy hurt? Does Mark know?"
She was reassured by both Magnus and Alec that Livvy was fine and that yes, Mark did know, but she was already halfway out the door.
She bolted down the hallway toward Mark's room. Her wrist was throbbing and aching-she'd been ignoring it, but it flared up now as she worried. Was it pain Mark was feeling, transmitted through the connection between them, the way parabatai sometimes felt each other's agony? Or was the binding spell getting worse, more intense?
His door was half-open, light spilling out from beneath it. She found him awake inside, lying on his bed. She could see the deep indentation of the binding rune like a bracelet around his left wrist.
"Cristina?" He sat up. "Are you all right?"
"I am not the one who was hurt," she said. "Alec and Magnus told me about Livvy."
He drew his legs up, making room for her to sit on the blanket beside him. The sudden reduction of pain in her wrist made her feel a little dizzy.
He told her what they had done, Kit, Livvy, and Ty: about the crystal they'd found at Blackthorn Hall, their visit to the Shadow Market and how Livvy had been injured. "I cannot help but think," he finished, "that if Julian had been here, if he hadn't left me in charge, none of it would have happened."
"Julian's the one who said they could go to Blackthorn Hall. And most of us are running missions at fifteen. It's not your fault they disobeyed."
"I didn't tell them not to go to the Shadow Market," he said, shivering a little. He pulled the patchwork blanket up around his shoulders, giving him the look of a sad Harlequin.
"You didn't tell them not to stab each other with knives, either, because they know that," she said tartly. "The Market is off-limits. Forbidden. Although-don't be too hard on Kit. The Shadow Market is the world he knows."
"I don't know how to take care of them," he said. "How do I tell them to obey rules when none of us do? We went to Faerie-a much greater breakage of the Law than a visit to the Shadow Market."
"Maybe you should all try taking care of each other," she said.
He smiled. "You're awfully wise."
"Is Kieran all right?" she said.
"Still awake, I think," he said. "He wanders around the Institute at night. He hasn't rested well since we came here-too much cold iron, I think. Too much city."
The neck of his T-shirt was frayed and loose. She could see where the scars on his back started, the marks of old injuries, the memory of knives. The patchwork blanket had begun slipping down his shoulder. Almost absently, Cristina reached to pull it up.
Her hand brushed along Mark's neck, along the bare skin where his throat met the cotton of his shirt. His skin was hot. He leaned in toward her; she could smell the pine of forests.
His face was close enough to hers that she could make out the changing colors in the irises of his eyes. The rise and fall of her own breath seemed to lift her toward him.
"Can you sleep here tonight?" he said hoarsely. "It will hurt less. For both of us."
His inhuman eyes glittered for a moment, and she thought of what Emma had said to her, that when she looked at him sometimes, she saw wildness and freedom and the unending roads of the sky.
"I can't," she whispered.
"Cristina-" He rose up on his knees. It was too cloudy outside for any moonlight or starlight, but Cristina could still see him, his light hair in tangles, his eyes fixed on her.
He was too close, too tangible. She knew if he touched her, she'd crumble. She wasn't even sure what that would mean, only that the idea of such total dissolution frightened her-and that she could see Kieran when she looked at Mark, like a shadow always beside him.
She slid off the bed. "I'm sorry, Mark," she said, and left the room so quickly she was almost running.
* * *
"Annabel seems so sad," Emma said. "So very sad."
They were lying in the cottage bed, side by side. It was a lot more comfortable than beds in the Institute, which was a little ironic, considering it was Malcolm's place. Julian guessed even murderers needed regular mattresses and didn't actually sleep on platforms made of skulls.
"She wanted me to leave the Black Volume alone," said Julian. He was lying on his back; they both were. Emma was in a pair of cotton pajamas she'd bought from the village shop, and Julian wore sweats and an old T-shirt. Their shoulders touched, and their feet; the bed wasn't very wide. Not that Julian would have moved away if he could have. "She said it only brings bad things."