Lord of Shadows (The Dark Artifices #2)(85)

Kit raised Adriel over his head. The seraph blade was hot under his grip, starting to flicker, but it cast a glow all around him, one he hoped illuminated him enough that the warlock could see it when he spat in his direction. 

Malcolm's gaze flattened. He turned back to Diana. "I will give you until tomorrow night to decide. Then I will return. If you do not provide a Blackthorn to me, the coast will be ravaged. In the meantime-" He snapped his fingers, and a dim purple fire flickered in the air. "Enjoy amusing yourselves with my friends here."

He vanished as the sea demons surged forward toward the Centurions.





12


BY THE MOUNTAINS


Mark shoved his way through the Unseelie Court. He had been among these people before only for revels: the Court was not always in the same place, but moved around the Unseelie Lands. Mark could smell blood on the night air now as he darted among the close-packed gentry. He could smell panic and fear and hate. Their hate of Shadowhunters. The King was calling to the Court to be quiet, but the crowd was shouting for Emma to spill her father's blood.

No one was guarding Kieran. He slumped on his knees, the weight of his body pulling against the thorned ropes that held him as if they were barbed wire. Blood oozed sluggishly around the lacerations on his wrists, neck, and ankles.

Mark pushed past the last of the courtiers. This close, he could see that Kieran wore something around his neck on a chain. An elf-bolt. Mark's elf-bolt. Mark's stomach tightened.

"Kieran." He put his hand against the other boy's cheek.

Kieran's eyes fluttered open. His face was gray with pain and hopelessness, but his smile was gentle. "So many dreams," he said. "Is this the end? Have you come to bear me to the Shining Lands? You could not have chosen a better face to wear."

Mark ran his hands along the ropes of thorns. They were tough. A seraph blade could have cut them, but seraph blades did not work here, leaving him only ordinary daggers. An idea sparked in Mark's mind, and he reached up to gently unfasten the elf-bolt from Kieran's throat.

"Whatever gods have done this," Kieran whispered, "they are gracious to bring me the one my soul loves, in my last moments." His head fell back against the tree, exposing the scarlet gashes around his throat where the thorns had cut in. "My Mark."

"Hush." Mark spoke through a tightened throat. The elf-bolt was sharp, and he drew the blade of it against the ropes that bound Kieran's throat and then his wrists. They fell away, and Kieran gave a gasp of pain relieved.

"It is true, as they say," said Kieran. "The pain leaves you as you die."

Mark slashed away the ropes binding Kieran's ankles, and straightened up. "That is enough," he said. "I am Mark, not an illusion. You are not dying, Kieran. You are living." He took Kieran by the wrist and helped him to his feet. "You are escaping."

Kieran's gaze seemed dazzled by moonlight. He reached for Mark and laid his hands on Mark's shoulders. There was a moment where Mark could have drawn away, but he didn't. He stepped toward Kieran just as Kieran did toward him, and he could smell blood and cut vines on Kieran, and they were kissing.

The curve of Kieran's lips under his own was as familiar to Mark as the taste of sugar or the feel of sunlight. But there was no sugar or sunlight here, nothing bright or sweet, only the dark pressure of the Court all around them and the scent of blood. And still his body responded to Kieran's, pressing the other boy up against the bark of the tree, gripping him, hands sliding on his skin, scars and fresh wounds under his fingertips.

Mark felt himself lifted up and out of his body, and he was in the Hunt again, hands gripped in Windspear's mane, leaning low into the wind that tore his hair and seared his throat and carried away his laughter. Kieran's arms were around him, the only warm thing in a cold world, and Kieran's lips against his cheek.



       
         
       
        

Something sang by his ear. He jerked away from Kieran. Another object whistled by and he instinctively crowded Kieran against the tree.

Arrows. Each arrow tipped with flame, they ripped their way through the Court like deadly fireflies. One of the Unseelie princes was racing toward Mark and Kieran, raising a bow as he came.

They had been noticed after all, it seemed.

* * *

The grass in front of the Institute seemed to boil, a mass of sea demons and Centurions, whipping tentacles and slashing seraph blades. Kit half-threw himself down the stairs, almost knocking into Samantha, who, alongside her twin, was battling furiously with a grotesque gray creature covered with sucking red mouths.