Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices #2)(67)

He caught at her. He looked angry, still, but he held her tightly nonetheless. "You've had enough dancing. And drinking."

"Enough dancing?" It was the girls in russet again, their red mouths laughing. Other than their different-colored eyes, they looked nearly identical. One of them pulled the ribbon from around her throat-Cristina stared; her neck was horribly scarred, as if her head had nearly been severed from her body. "Dance together," the girl said-nearly spat it, as if it were a curse, and looped the ribbon around Mark's and Cristina's wrists, binding them together. "Enjoy the binding, Hunter." She grinned at Mark, and her teeth were black, as if they had been painted that color, and sharp as needles.

Cristina gasped, stumbling back, pulling Mark after her, the ribbon connecting them. It stretched like a rubber band, not breaking or fraying. Mark caught up to her, seizing her hand in his, his fingers threaded through hers.

He drew her after him, fast and sure-footed on the uneven terrain, finding the breaks in the heavy mist. They pushed between dancing couples until the grass under them was no longer trampled and the music was faint in their ears.

Mark veered to the side, making for a copse of trees. He slipped under the branches, holding the low-hanging ones aside to let Cristina in after him. Once she had ducked underneath, he released them, closing them both into a dirt-floored space beneath the trees, hidden from the outside world by long branches, laden with fruit, that touched the ground.

Mark sat down, drawing a knife from his belt. "Come here," he said, and when Cristina came to sit beside him, he took her hand and slashed apart the ribbon binding them. 

It made a little shrieking, hurt sound, like a wounded animal, but frayed and gave. He let go of Cristina and dropped the knife. Faint sunlight filtered down through the branches above, and in the dim illumination, the ribbon still around his wrist looked like blood.

The ribbon was looped around Cristina's wrist as well, no longer burning, trailing its lonely end in the dirt. She worried at it with her nails until it came free and fell to the ground. Her fingers kept slipping. Probably the faerie drink, still in her system, she thought.

She glanced over at Mark. His face was drawn, his gold and blue eyes shadowed. "That could have been very bad," he said, casting the rest of his ribbon aside. "A binding spell like that can tie two people together and send one of them mad, make them drown themselves and pull the other in after them."

"Mark," Cristina said. "I'm sorry. I should have listened to you. You know more about revels than I do. You have experience. I only have the books I read."

"No," he said unexpectedly. "I wanted to go too. I liked dancing with you. It was good to be there with someone . . ."

"Human?" Cristina said.

The heat in her chest had turned into a strange pinching feeling, a hot pressure that increased when she looked at him. At the curves of his cheekbones, the hollows of his temples. His loose, wheat-colored shirt was open at the throat, and she could see that place she had always thought was the most beautiful spot on a man's body, the smooth muscle over the clavicle and the vulnerable hollow.

"Yes, human," he said. "We are all human, I know. But I have almost never known anyone as human as you."

Cristina felt breathless. The faerie mist had stolen her breath, she thought, that and the enchantment all around them.

"You are kind," he said, "one of the kindest people I have known. In the Hunt, there was not much kindness. When I think that when the sentence of the Cold Peace was passed, there was someone a thousand miles away from Idris, someone who had never met me but who cried for a boy who had been abandoned . . ."

"I said I didn't cry." Cristina's voice hitched.

Mark's hand was a pale blur. She felt his fingers against her face. They came away wet, shining in the mist-light. "You're crying now," he said.

When she caught at his hand, it was damp with her own tears. And when she leaned toward him through the mist, and kissed him, she tasted salt.

For a moment Mark was startled, unmoving, and Cristina felt a spear of terror go through her, worse than the sight of any demon. That Mark might not want this, that he might be horrified . . .

"Cristina," he said, as she broke away from him, and went up on his knees, his arm coming around her a little awkwardly, his hand burying itself in her hair. "Cristina," he said again, with a break in his voice, the rough sound of desire.

She put her hands on either side of his face, her palms in the hollows of his cheeks, and marveled at the softness where Diego had had stubble, rough against her skin. She let him come to her this time, closing her into the circle of his left arm, fitting his mouth to hers.