Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices #2)(70)

He was looking at a faerie woman, her skin smooth and pale, an unmarked, unwrinkled canvas. She was grinning, her lips red. Her hair was the color of cobwebs-it was cobwebs, gray and fine and drifting. She could have been any age at all. Her only clothes were a ragged black shift. She was beautiful and also hideous.

"You delight me, Shadowhunter," she crooned. "Will you not come back to my arms for more kisses?"

She reached out. Julian stumbled back. He had never in his life kissed anyone but Emma; he felt sick now, in his heart and guts. He wanted to reach for a seraph blade, to burn the air between them, to feel the familiar heat race up his arm and through his veins and cauterize his nausea. 

His hand had only just closed around the hilt of the blade when he remembered: It wouldn't work here.

"Leave him alone!" someone shouted. "Get away from my brother, leanansídhe!"

It was Mark. He was emerging from a copse of trees with Cristina just behind him. There was a dagger in his hand.

The faerie woman laughed. "Your weapons will not work in this realm, Shadowhunter."

There was a click, and Cristina's folding knife bloomed open in her hand. "Come and speak your words of challenge to my blade, barrow-woman."

The faerie pulled back with a hiss, and Julian saw his own blood on her teeth. He felt light-headed with sickness and anger. She whirled and was gone in a moment, a gray-black blur racing down the hill.

The music had stopped. The dancers, too, had begun to scatter: The sun was setting, the shadows thick across the ground. Whatever kind of revel it had been, it was one that apparently was not friendly to nightfall.

"Julian, brother." Mark hurried forward, his eyes concerned. "You look ill-sit down, drink some water-"

A soft whistle came from farther up the hill. Julian turned. Emma was standing on the ridge, buckling on Cortana. He saw the relief on her face as she caught sight of them.

"I wondered where you'd gone," she said, hurrying down the hill. Her smile as she looked at them all was hopeful. "I was worried you'd eaten faerie fruit and were running naked around the greensward."

"No nudity," said Julian. "No greensward."

Emma tightened the strap on Cortana. Her hair had been pulled back into a long braid, only a few pale tendrils escaping. She looked around at their tense faces, her brown eyes wide. "Is everything okay?"

Julian could still feel the fingerprints of the leanansídhe all over him. He knew what leanansídhe were-wild faeries who took the shape of whatever you wanted to see, seduced you, and fed on your blood and skin.

At least he was the only one who would have seen Emma. Mark and Cristina would have seen the leanansídhe in her true form. That was one humiliation and danger spared them all.

"Everything's fine," he said. "We'd better get going. The stars are just coming out, and we've got a long way still to go."

* * *

"All right," Livvy said, pausing in front of a narrow wooden door. It didn't look much like the rest of the Institute, glass and metal and modernity. It seemed like a warning. "Here we go."

She didn't look eager.

They'd decided-with Kit mostly as silent onlooker-to go directly to Arthur Blackthorn's office. Even if it was two in the morning, even if he didn't want to be bothered with Centurion business, he needed to know what Zara was planning.

She was after the Institute, Livvy had explained as they scrambled back along the beach and rocks to where they'd started. Surely that's why she'd said what she had about Arthur-clearly she'd tell any lie.

Kit had never thought about Institutes much-they'd always struck him as something like police stations, buzzy hives of Shadowhunters meant to keep an eye on specific locations. It seemed they were more like small city-states: in charge of a certain area, but run by a family appointed by the Council in Idris.

"There's seriously an entire private country that's just Shadowhunters?" Kit demanded as they headed up the road to the Institute, rising like a shadow against the mountains behind it.

"Yes," said Livvy tersely. In other words, Shut up and listen. Kit had the feeling she was processing what was happening by explaining it to him. He shut up and let her.



       
         
       
        

An Institute was run by a head, whose family lived with him or her; they also housed families who'd lost members, or Nephilim orphans-of whom there were many. The head of an Institute had significant power: Most Consuls were chosen from that pool, and they could propose new Laws, which would be passed if a vote went their way.