Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices #2)(167)

"It is real to me," Mark said. "All of this is real to me." He leaned forward. "I need to know you are here in this with me, Kieran."

"What does that mean?"

"It means no more anger," said Mark. "It means no more sending me dreams. I needed you for so long, Kieran. I needed you so much, and that kind of need, it bends you and warps you. It makes you desperate. It makes you not choose."



       
         
       
        

Kieran had frozen. "You're saying you didn't choose me?"

"I'm saying the Wild Hunt chose us. I'm saying if you are finding strangeness in me, and distance, it is because I cannot help but ask myself, over and over: In another world, in another situation, would we still have chosen each other?" He looked hard at the other boy. "You are a gentry prince. And I am half-Nephilim, worse than the lowest chaff, tainted in blood and lineage."

"Mark."

"I am saying the choices we make in captivity are not always the choices we make in freedom. And thus we question them. We cannot help it."

"It is different for me," said Kieran. "After this, I return to the Hunt. You are the one with freedom."

"I will not let you be forced back into the Hunt if you do not wish it."

Kieran's eyes softened. In that moment, Mark thought he would have promised him anything, no matter how rash.

"I would like us both to have freedom," Mark said. "To laugh, to enjoy ourselves together, to love in the ordinary way. You are free here with me, and perhaps we could take that chance, that time."

"Very well," Kieran said, after a long pause. "I will stay with you. And I will help you with your dull books." He smiled. "I am in this with you, Mark, if that is how we will learn what we mean to each other."

"Thank you," Mark said. Kieran, like most faeries, had no use for "you're welcome"; instead he slid off the windowsill and went in search of a book on the shelves. Mark stared after him. He had said nothing to Kieran that was not true, and yet he felt as leaden inside as if every word he had spoken was a lie.

* * *

The sky over London was cloudless and blue and beautiful. The water of the Thames, parting on either side of the boat, was almost blue. Sort of the color of tea, Kit thought, if you put blue ink into it.

The place they were going-Ty had the address-was on Gill Street, Magnus had explained, in Limehouse. "Used to be a terrible neighborhood," he said. "Full of opium dens and gambling houses. God, it was fun back then."

Mark had looked immediately panicked.

"Don't worry," Magnus had added. "It's very dull now. All fancy condos and gastropubs. Very safe."

Julian would have forbidden this excursion, Kit was fairly sure. But Mark hadn't hesitated-he seemed, far more than his brother, to regard Livvy and Ty as adult Shadowhunters who were simply expected to work like the others.

It was Ty who had hesitated for a moment, looking worriedly at his sister. Livvy seemed absolutely fine now-they were on the top level of the boat, open to the air, and she was raising her face into the wind with unabashed pleasure, letting it lift her hair and whip it around. 

Ty was watching everything around them with that absorbed fascination of his, as if he were memorizing every building, every street. His fingers drummed a tattoo on the metal railing, but Kit didn't think that indicated anxiety. He'd noticed that Ty's gestures didn't always correspond to a bad mood. Sometimes they corresponded to a good one: If he was feeling relaxed, he'd watch his own fingers make lazy patterns against the air, the way a meteorologist might watch the movement of clouds.

"If I became a Shadowhunter," Kit said, to neither of the twins specifically, "would I have to do a lot of homework? Or could I just, sort of, start doing it?"

Livvy's eyes sparkled. "You are doing it."

"Yes, but this is a state of emergency," said Ty. "He's right-he'd have to catch up on some classes. It's not as if you're as ignorant as a mundane would be," he added to Kit, "but there are some things you'd probably need to learn-classes of demons, languages, that sort of thing."

Kit made a face. "I was really hoping I could learn on the job."

Livvy laughed. "You could always go in front of the Council and make a case for it."

"The Council?" said Kit. "How are they different from the Clave?"

Livvy laughed harder.

"I can see how your case might not be successful," said Ty. "Though I suppose we could tutor you a bit."