Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices #2)(184)

Kieran's hair tickled her fingers. It was soft, surprisingly so. His skin was incredibly fine-grained, more so than any human's, like the surface of polished porcelain. She remembered Mark kissing Kieran against a tree in the desert, hands on his hair, pushing the neck of his sweater down to get at his skin, his bones, his body. She blushed.

"Why did you follow me?" Kieran said stiffly.

"I saw you through the library window," said Cristina. "I thought you were running away."

"I went to see Adaon, as I promised I would, that is all. Besides"- he laughed shortly-"where have I to go?"

"People often run even when they have nowhere to go," said Cristina. "It is all about what you can bear in the place where you are."

There was a long silence, long enough that Cristina assumed Kieran wasn't planning to answer. Then he spoke. "I have the sense," he said, "that I have done Mark some kind of wrong. I do not know what it was. But I see it in his eyes when he looks at me. He thinks he is hiding it, but he is not. Though he can lie with his mouth, he has never learned to conceal the truth in his eyes."

"You'll have to ask Mark," said Cristina. They had reached the street that led to the Institute. Cristina could see the spire of it rising in the distance. "When Adaon said that if you became King, you'd have to give up Mark, what did he mean?"

"A King of Faerie can have no human consort." He looked down at her with his eyes like stars. "Mark lies about you. But I have seen the way he looks at you. Last night, when we danced. He more than desires you."

"Do-do you mind?" Cristina said.

"I do not mind you," said Kieran. "I thought I would, but I do not. It is something about you. You are beautiful, and you are kind, and you are-good. I do not know why that should make a difference. But it does."

He sounded almost surprised. Cristina said nothing. Her blood was getting on Kieran's shirt. It was a surreal sight. His body was warm, not cold as marble as she'd always imagined. He smelled faintly of night and woods, a clean smell untouched by the city.

"Mark needs kindness," Kieran said, after a long pause. "And so do I."

They'd reached the Institute, and Kieran went quickly up the stairs-and paused at the top. His arms tautened around her.

Cristina looked at him, puzzled. Then the light dawned. "You can't open the door," she said. "You're not a Shadowhunter."

"That is the case." Kieran blinked at the doors as if they'd surprised him.

"What if you'd come back without me?" Cristina had the most bizarre urge to laugh, though nothing that had happened had been funny, and Erec's blood still stiffened the back of her clothes. She wondered how many times she'd have to shower before she felt even a little clean. "I really would have imagined you'd thought further ahead."

"I seem to have absorbed some of your human impulsiveness," Kieran said.

He sounded shocked at himself. Taking pity on him, Cristina began to unknot her fingers from around his neck.



       
         
       
        

She reached for the door, but it swung inward. Light blazed out of the entryway, and on the threshold stood Mark, staring from one of them to the other in astonishment.

"Where were you?" he demanded. "By the Angel-Kieran, Cristina-" He reached out as if to take her from Kieran's arms.

"It's all right," Cristina said. "I can stand."

Kieran gently lowered her to the ground. The pain in her arm was already beginning to fade, though looking at Mark's wrist-red, puffy, ringed with blood-filled her with guilt. It was so hard to believe, even now, that the pain she felt was his pain too; her bleeding, his bleeding.

Mark drew his hand down her sleeve, already hardening as Erec's blood dried. "All this blood-it's not just your wrist-and why would you go out, either of you-?"

"It is not her blood," said Kieran. "It is my brother's."

They were all in the entryway now. Kieran reached behind him and deliberately shut the massive front doors with a loud clang. Above them, Cristina could hear footsteps, someone hurrying downstairs.

"Your brother's?" Mark echoed. Against Kieran's dark clothes the blood hadn't been very visible, but Mark seemed to look more closely now and see the thin spatters of scarlet against Kieran's neck and cheek. "You mean-Adaon?"

Kieran looked dazed. "I went to meet him, to speak of the binding spell and of his possible accession to the throne."

"And blood was spilled? But why?" Mark touched Kieran's cheek gently. "If we had known there might be a fight, we never would have suggested you talk to him on our behalf. And why did you go alone? Why did you not tell me, or bring me with you?"