Stars exploded behind her eyelids. Not just any stars, but the many-colored stars of Faerie. She saw clouds and constellations; she tasted night air on his mouth. His lips moved frantically against hers. He was still whispering her name, incoherent between kisses. His free hand slid over her waist, up her side. He groaned when her fingers found their way into the neck of his shirt and brushed along his collarbone, touched the beating pulse in his throat.
He said something in a language she didn't know, and then he was flat on the ground and she was over him, and he was pulling her down, hands fierce on her back and her shoulders, and she wondered if this was how it had always been for him with Kieran, fierce and ungentle. She remembered seeing them kiss in the desert behind the Institute, and how it had been a frantic thing, a clash of bodies, and it had sparked desire in her then and did again now.
He arched up and she heard him gasp as she slid down his body, kissing his throat, then his chest through his shirt, and then her fingers were on his buttons and she heard him laugh breathlessly, saying her name, and then, "I never thought you'd even look at me, not someone like you, Shadowhunter royalty-like a princess-"
"It's amazing what a bit of enchanted faerie drink will do." She meant to sound teasing, lighthearted. But Mark went still under her. A moment later he had moved, quick and graceful, and was sitting at least a foot from her, his hands up as if to hold her away.
"Faerie drink?" he echoed.
Cristina looked at him in surprise. "The sweet drink the cat-faced man gave to me. You tasted it."
"There was nothing in it," Mark said, with uncharacteristic sharpness. "I knew the moment I put my lips to my skin. It was only brambleberry juice, Cristina."
Cristina recoiled slightly, both from his anger and from the realization that there had been no blurring cloak of magic over the things she'd just done.
"But I thought-"
"You thought you were kissing me because you were intoxicated," Mark said. "Not because you wanted to, or because you actually like me."
"But I do like you." She rose to her knees, but Mark was already on his feet. "I have since I met you."
"Is that why you got together with Diego?" Mark said, and then shook his head, backing up. "Maybe I can't do this."
"Do what?" Cristina staggered upright.
"Be with a human who lies," Mark said, uninflected.
"But you've lied too," said Cristina. "You've lied about being with Emma."
"And you've taken part in that same lie."
"Because it has to be told," Cristina said. "For both their sakes. If Julian wasn't in love with her, then he wouldn't need to think-"
She broke off, then, as Mark went white in the shadows. "What did you say?"
Cristina put her hand to her mouth. The fact of Emma and Julian's feelings for each other was so rooted in what she knew about them that it was hard to remember others didn't know. It was so clear in their every word and gesture, even now; how could Mark not know?
"But they're parabatai," he said, bewildered. "It's illegal. The punishment-Julian wouldn't. He just wouldn't."
"I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. I was just guessing-"
"You weren't guessing," Mark said, and turned away from her, shoving his way out through the branches of the trees.
Cristina went after him. He had to understand he couldn't say anything to Julian. Her betrayal weighted her heart like a stone, her sense of humiliation forgotten in her fear for Emma, her realization of what she'd done. She pushed through the tree branches, the dry-edged leaves scratching at her skin. A moment later, she was outside on the green hill, and she saw Julian.
* * *
The music woke Jules, the music and an enveloping sense of warmth. He hadn't been warm in so long, not even at night, bundled in blankets.
He blinked his eyes open. He could hear music in the distance, weaving feathery tendrils across the sky. He turned his head to the side and saw with a jolt of familiarity Emma beside him, her head on her jacket. Their hands were clasped on the grass between them, his tanned fingers wrapped tightly around her smaller ones.
He drew his hand back fast, his heart pounding, and scrambled to his feet. He wondered if he'd reached for her in his sleep, or had she reached for him? No, she wouldn't have reached for him. She had Mark. She might have kissed him, Julian, but it was Mark's name she'd said.
He'd thought he would be all right, sleeping this close to her, but apparently he'd been wrong. His hand still felt as if it were burning, but the rest of his body was cold again. Emma murmured and turned, her blond hair falling over her hand, now curled palm-up on the grass as if she were reaching out for him.