Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices #2)(217)

"You want to summon Gwyn again?" Cristina shook her head. Her hair fell completely out of its unfastened braid, spilling down her back. She saw Kieran glance at it. "No. He won't interfere again. You want to speak to someone else in Faerie. Your brother?"

"As I thought." He inclined his head slightly. "You guess my intentions exactly."

"And you can do it? The acorn won't just call Gwyn?"

"The magic is a fairly simple one. Remember, you are not of the blood than can cast spells, but I am. It should bring a Projection of my brother to us. I will ask him of our father's plans. I shall ask him as well if he can stop the Riders."

Cristina was astonished. "Can anyone stop the Riders?"

"They are servants of the Court, and under its command."

"Why are you telling me this?" Cristina asked.

"Because to summon my brother, I must reach out with my mind into Faerie," said Kieran. "And it would be safer, should I wish to keep my mind intact, for me to have a connection here in the world. Something-someone-to keep me anchored while I seek my brother."

Cristina slid off the bed. Standing straight, she was only a little shorter than Kieran. Her eyes were level with his mouth. "Why me? Why not Mark?"

"I have asked enough of Mark," he said.

"Perhaps," she said, "but even if that is true, I do not think it is the whole truth."

"Few of us are lucky enough ever to know the whole truth of anything." She knew Kieran was young, but there was something ancient in his eyes when he spoke. "Will you put your hand in mine?"

She gave him the hand whose wrist bore the red mark of her bond with Mark. It seemed fitting, somehow. His fingers closed around hers, cool and dry, light as the touch of a leaf. 

With his other hand, Kieran dashed the golden acorn against the wall beside the fireplace mantel.

For a moment, there was silence. Cristina could hear his ragged breathing. It seemed strange for a faerie-everything they did was at such a remove from ordinary human emotion, it was odd to hear Kieran gasp. But then she remembered his arms around her, the uneven thud of his heart. They were flesh and blood after all, weren't they? Bone and muscle, just as Shadowhunters were. And the flame of angelic blood burned in them, too . . . .

Darkness spread across the wall like a stain. Cristina sucked in her breath, and Kieran's hand tightened on hers. The darkness moved and shivered, trembled and re-formed. Light danced within it, and Cristina could see the multicolored night sky of Faerie. And within the shadow, a darker shadow. A man, wrapped in a dark cloak. As the darkness lightened, Cristina saw his grin before she saw anything else, and her heart seemed to stop.

It was a grin of bones set within a skeletal half face, beautiful on one side, deathly on the other. The cloak that wrapped him was ink-black and bore the insignia of a broken crown. He stood straight and broad, grinning his lopsided grin down at Kieran.

They had not summoned Adaon at all. It was the Unseelie King.

* * *

"No. NO!" Tavvy wept, his face buried in Julian's shoulder. He'd taken the news that he was going to Idris with Alec, Max, and Rafe worse than Mark had expected. Did all children cry like this, like everything in the world was ruined and their hearts were broken, even at the news of a short parting?

Not that Mark blamed Tavvy, of course. It was only that he felt as if his own heart was being shredded into pieces inside his chest as he watched Julian walk up and down the room, holding his small brother in his arms as Tavvy sobbed and pounded his back.

"Tavs," Julian said in his gentle voice, the voice Mark could hardly reconcile with the boy who had faced down the Unseelie King in his own Court with a knife to a prince's throat. "It's only going to be a day, two days at most. You'll get to see the canals in Alicante, the Gard . . . ."

"You keep leaving," Tavvy choked against his brother's shirtfront. "You can't leave again."

Julian sighed. He dipped his chin, rubbing his cheek against his brother's unruly curls. Over Tavvy's head, his eyes met Mark's. There was no blame in them, and no self-pity, only a terrible sadness.

Yet Mark felt as if guilt were crushing his rib cage. If only were wasted words, Kieran had once said, when Mark had speculated on whether the two of them would ever have met if they had never joined the Hunt. But he couldn't stop the flood of if onlys now: if only he had been able to stay with his family, if only Julian hadn't needed to be mother and father and brother to all the younger ones, if only Tavvy hadn't grown up in the shadow of death and loss. Perhaps then, every parting would not feel like the last one.

"It's not your fault," said Magnus, who had appeared noiselessly at Mark's side. "You can't help the past. We grow up with losses, all of us except the supremely lucky."